Alain De Botton

So in a way, we should all be able to point stuff out and not necessarily feel that we're abandoning love.

You know, I was very interested in one point in the book, I talk about

the idea that love is a process of education.

Now this sounds really odd.

It's like, what?

You're trying to be my teacher?

It sounds a bit sterile.

Totally sterile.

But the ancient Greeks, you see, the ancient Greeks thought that love is education.

They thought that you shouldn't just love everything in a person.

You should only love what is good and virtuous and accomplished.

The rest of the stuff you can tolerate it.

But they believed that the purpose of love is for a couple to educate one another, to become the best version of themselves.

And they take it in turns to be pupil and teacher in a rotating circle and that there's constantly something to learn.

Now, this sounds so weird to our modern age.

I mean, if you got together with your partner and then sort of pulled out a list and said, you know, I've been reading some Plato and I really think that it would be important at this point to teach you a long lesson about your faults because I want to try and make you into a better person.

The person would say, you know, my mother's never said that, you know.

what are you saying?

I thought you loved me.

But I think that many arguments and conflicts between lovers are really attempts by both sides, or one side, to try and teach something.