Alain De Botton

That's right.

I mean, it's completely surprising nowadays that we routinely expect that everybody will love their spouse.

I mean, I was doing a talk the other day at the Opera House, and I said to everybody, look, is there anyone here who's married?

and actually loves their partner.

So there was a sort of embarrassed, and eventually people put up their hands, and I said, you guys are so remarkable, because for most of human history, the idea that you would love the person that you were raising kids with, doing the farming with, I mean, it would have been inconceivable.

You know, maybe tolerate them, but love them?

That's a new idea, and it's a troubling idea.

Well, there was lots of nervous, you know, nervous giggling.

No, I think, look, pessimism is normally seen as the enemy of good things.

If I was a pessimistic mountain climber, you'd kind of think this was a bad idea or pessimistic pilot.

But I think that strategic pessimism really means that in some areas of relationships,

we're not going to be able to necessarily have everything that we want.

I mean, the key area for this is around sex.

You know, there are two things that we really want around sexuality that are deeply incompatible.

We want loyalty, familiarity, trust on the one hand.

And on the other hand, we want excitement, novelty, a new person.

And we keep trying to find ways of reconciling these two things.

You know, in the 60s, there was free love.

Nowadays, there's people who argue for polyamory.

Always an attempt to kind of have the two things.