Alain De Botton

But they're failed teaching lessons.

And they're failed teaching lessons because we don't accept the legitimacy of education within love.

I mean, you know, so we're very nervous teachers when we go into love.

And that's why, you know, because the background of our minds, we've got the thought,

You know, I've ruined my life.

This person, I've married the wrong person.

And therefore, you're panicked.

And when you're trying to get something across, you lose your temper, you humiliate.

And no one ever learns anything from being humiliated by their so-called inverted commas teacher.

Look, I think there's a weird way in which many of the things we think of as unromantic are oddly properly romantic if we re-baptise the word romantic to mean unromantic.

something that will help long-term love.

So, for example, trying to go patiently over issues and conflicts and not merely storming out or accusing the person of being patronizing or whatever, that this is actually a vital glue that holds a couple together.

Don't get me wrong.

Look, feeling has a role.

Chemistry has a role.

Instinct has a role.

But I think that once you're in the relationship, you're going to have to do an awful lot of patient kind of decoding.

Take the, I think you mentioned the bathroom towel.

You know, part of the problem with the romantics is that they never prepared us

for the practical side of life.