Conversations
Special Collection: Alain de Botton on the true hardwork of love and relationships
22 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What common misconceptions about love are challenged in this episode?
We all know how the story of love is supposed to go.
There's two people, there's a chemical attraction, perhaps moments of doubt or opposition. There's a sharing of secrets, lots of heavy breathing. And so you meet your soulmate and you fall in love and love triumphs over the difficulties. And it's a kind of victory experience. That one story is so deeply ingrained in most of us. We grow up with it.
It's become a kind of subconscious map of how we think our lives ought to go. But philosopher and author Alain de Botton says that most love stories are stories about the start of love. And the story makes no sense. It sets us up for disappointment and failure. This love story actually has the opposite effect in that it works against love.
Alain says that love and partnership and marriage, it's not something we just know about. It's a skill and it has to be learned. And to help, he's written an instructive novel called The Course of Love. And it follows the story of a very ordinary couple, Robbie and Kirsten, not at the exciting outset, but in the long, difficult middle bits. And he writes that Robbie and Kirsten will marry.
They will suffer. They will frequently worry about money. They will have a girl first, then a boy. One of them will have an affair. There will be passages of boredom. Sometimes they'll want to murder one another and on a few occasions to kill themselves. This will be the real love story. Welcome back, Alain. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
You know, the thing is, like, yeah, it's silly, that lovebird thing, but it's so disarming and charming and lovely, isn't it?
Of course. I mean, this is the cult of what I call romanticism, which has been around for a few hundred years. And it is like chocolate. It is delicious. It's irresistible. And we all fall for it. And, you know, the way that we love is very influenced by our societies. I mean, Society tells us to pay attention to certain emotions and to neglect others.
There's that lovely quote from La Rochefoucauld. There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they hadn't heard there was such a thing. And, of course, our society constantly tells us there is such a thing as love and it goes like this. And we've got this kind of template of romantic love. And it's all about finding an ideal soulmate.
When you find this soulmate, you will find that there is no more loneliness, no more room for confusion and error. They will complete you. You will become whole. You will find this soulmate by intuition. You'll get a magical feeling called falling in love. If you don't have that feeling, you can sort of fake it. But basically, it's an almost divine feeling. Lots of other assumptions.
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Chapter 2: How does Alain de Botton define the real work involved in love and relationships?
Sex becomes the most important thing in love. You know, sex becomes the bellwether of love. All these sort of assumptions. Now, in a way, they're lovely. But I argue, and the book argues, that to some extent, if we're to make long-term relationships work, we're going to have to be disloyal to some of the emotions, some of the romantic emotions that propel us into relationships in the first place.
These things are trouble and they're misleading. How? How old is this concept of romantic love? Have we had it from the get-go? No, I think it arises in the minds of people in garrets and libraries in old Europe in about the middle of the 18th century, and it replaces an older vision of relationships.
which is really all about a dynastic view that you should get together with people chosen by your parents, the elders, the community, and it's because they have a cow and you have a cow and so you should get together. This is swept away by the marriage of passion. And it's really a fusion of the love affair and the marriage.
And so now there's this idea that kind of it's forever and it's as intense as a previous short-term love affair. And look, as I say, it's a lovely idea that's got us into trouble.
I've actually seen accounts in Roman history, ancient Roman history, where they'll talk about an emperor or a general. They go, get a load of that guy, Pompey the Great. He actually loves his wife.
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.
Now, why are you asking questions like that in a crowded theatre? Were fights breaking out as a result? What cans of worms were you opening with that question, I wonder?
Well, there was lots of nervous, you know, nervous giggling.
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Chapter 3: What role does society play in shaping our ideas about love?
Very, you know, we're an age nowadays that wants the complete package. And I think, you know, the UK hasn't produced much good of late, but one of its chief good exports is melancholy. And I think that sometimes in love, there is no answer but a kind of melancholy, which is different from bitterness or rage or fury. It is the incompatibility of life. well handled, handled with dignity.
And I think that society really doesn't help us in this area. It constantly excites us to expect total fulfillment across the board.
What is love then to your mind? That's a really weird question. I can't believe I just asked that. What is love to your mind though? I mean, is it ultimately what is love? I mean, in your mind, is it kind of a, I don't know, is it a kind of deep compassion in spite of everything?
Yes, I think it is a profound attempt by one person to understand another and vice versa. But also, and you put your nail on the head, compassion is absolutely key because, you know, a lot of what goes wrong in relationships is self-righteousness, bitterness, a sense that you're okay. you've done the right things, but it's your partner that's to blame.
And I think that the relationships that go well, and this is eventually what happens to the couple in my novel, is that they learn to forgive one another, which sounds so weird because we've heard it from church pulpits, etc. But what does that really mean? It really means being aware of one's own imperfections.
I say at one point that in a better world than ours, lovers on a first date, one of the first things they should say to one another is, so how are you crazy? And they would each see that question as not necessarily...
pejorative one or an insulting one it's like everybody should be on top of their eccentricities and difficulties and see the ways in which they damage others and you know the best wedding present you could ever give anyone is a sort of 150 page manual called why I'm difficult to live with the most dangerous people are those who think that they're easy to live with because they're going to be you know we don't need people to be perfect
But we need people to have a grasp on their imperfections and to be able to explain as far as they can the nature of these imperfections before we've been hurt too badly by them. Because by the time somebody's really wounded us and then they start to explain, oh, but, you know, it's because my mother, when I was three, I was damaged.
You're not going to listen because, like, you've ruined my life. I don't care about, you know, where this comes from. But if you can do it early on, you can explain yourself. You can say, look, I'm a little damaged in this area, or when I get sad, this happens, or when I get anxious, I have a tendency to do X, Y, and Z. If you can explain it, you're halfway there.
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Chapter 4: How do childhood experiences influence adult relationships?
what's wrong? And you go, you don't want to explain. And they go, come on, what is it? And you go, because you basically, as a romantic, expecting them to kind of read your soul through the bathroom panel and into the innards of your thing. And this is catastrophic. We have to use words.
But romantic culture, which is kind of what I'm taking an aim at in the novel, is kind of not giving us the good preparation for this.
Often the first foray into love is a crush. What's going on there to your mind?
Again, romantics are very keen on crushes. A crush is a momentary glimpse maybe of another person, perhaps you've never spoken to them, that is accompanied by an absolute certainty that this is the one and that this person you have encountered a perfection, an angel shorn of their wings but walking among humans.
You know, romanticism, it was accompanied by the spread of the railways in 19th century Europe. And there are so many stories where people get a crush on a train. So like you're sitting across the aisle, you see somebody and they look just so wonderful. And off you go. It's charming, but it's deeply dangerous because the truth is that everybody from close up is trouble.
And you don't need to know anyone very much to know that there will be something. They may look delightful and have a wry smile and an intelligent pair of ankles or whatever it is that's driving the crush. But the point is, once you get to know them better, you know, but the thing about crushes is that they undermine our capacity to have long-term relationships.
Because, you know, you have a crush on a train, then you return home, there's your partner, you've been with them a few years, and you're kind of touchy with them. And, you know, you're not that friendly because in the back of your mind, you're thinking, but There was this angel that I saw on, you know, on the commuter train. And, you know, that belief. She'd understand. She'd understand.
Exactly. The constant belief that elsewhere there is this unicorn, the right person. And it's not helped by technology.
No. Have you had that experience? I think I spent my whole teens and twenties getting on trams in Melbourne and elsewhere. Oh, my God. Just being paralyzed with this feeling of anxiety. And not even saying a word, not even talking at all to this person.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of self-awareness in romantic partnerships?
But we tend to discover, and this makes relationships so complicated, we don't want people just to treat us well. We want people to feel familiar. which may mean that they may need to make us suffer in ways that we're kind of used to. And you know those people that you set up on dates and you say, you know, you two should really get together. You're very compatible.
And then they get together and they report that actually it doesn't really work. And they say, oh, the chemistry is not right. Or they're really nice, but they don't do it for me. And often what's going on is we're feeling that a person is not going to make us suffer in the way that we need to suffer in order to experience love.
And this is so perverse. We need to suffer. So is this what happens when we follow our feelings? We don't need to think, we just follow our feelings here.
This is why feelings are so unreliable, because most of the time they're carrying these complicated histories. You know those people who say, in order to really fall in love with someone, they've got to be unreliable, about to go on a long trip, not earning much money, and kind of unfriendly. And you're thinking, you're attractive, you're lovely, why always this person? And then you
dig back into the past and you realize dad was a bit like that you know you don't need to be Freud this is why chemistry is a bad word isn't it in a way because chemistry implies a scientific rational uh mode of operation there when in fact you're just being guided by a tangle of something really messy and probably unhealthy that's right but you know but romanticism tells us intuition is a brilliant thing you know the old marriage of reason when your parents got you together
that's a flawed thing. And I agree, it is a flawed thing. But what they've replaced it with is this notion of intuition. And we should all bow down to intuition. So if you meet someone at a bar, have that special feeling, off you go and get married for the next 50 years. Well, of course, it's deeply dangerous. Intuition is not necessarily a good guide to a long-term partner.
There's this movie, really famous movie, Jerry Maguire, and there's the famous climax scene of it between Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger. And he says this to her.
I love you.
You? Just shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello.
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Chapter 6: How can couples navigate conflicts and improve their communication?
One of you has been out to buy something kind of nutty and granolary. And you're kind of listening to your partner and you're thinking, what's that funny noise? And you suddenly turn to your partner and you're in a slightly bad mood. And you go, you know what? You sound like a cow, you know. And the partner turns around and goes... oh my God, you're criticizing me. I thought you loved me.
And you want to go, no, no, I do love you. It's just, there's this kind of odd thing going on, this like bovine way in which you're eating the cereal. And romanticism tells us this is a catastrophe for love. It's a sign, you know, and, you know, love gives us a ringside seat on another person's floors.
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. 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.
Yeah, but it feels like kind of a sterile way to pick your partners in life, though. I mean, what are you calling for here? A kind of an old idea of like... well, I'm going to marry you because, you know, the man looks at the woman and goes, you know, you've got childbearing hips, your father owns a pub, that kind of thing.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of strategic pessimism in love?
Yeah.
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.
In 19th century poetry, say, there's no mention of any lovers ever doing the laundry. There's just like no one ever does the laundry. Whereas actually most couples, they have to spend quite a lot of time doing the laundry. But it's very possible to imagine that your life's gone a bit wrong because you thought you were entering into this kind of dreamlike, hallucinogenic kind of
you know wonderful merging of souls and suddenly you're arguing over the socks and it's all about budgeting correctly for difficulties and I think that the cult of romanticism encourages us to see that something's gone seriously wrong if you're having that towel argument about whether the towel should or shouldn't be up or down whatever and
You know, arguments are never as bitter as when two quite, you know, well-educated, ambitious people say things like, I'm above having an argument over this petty thing. I know so many lovers who are hilarious to watch because there are conflicts between them, but they refuse to take this conflict seriously.
They say things like, well, it's only the remote control or who's too stupid to have a long argument about whether the window is open or shut at night. But then they go on to have enormous arguments about these, but in a bitter argument. and low sort of guerrilla warfare way.
And I think, again, it's the result of a view that if you are a serious and thoughtful and passionate person, you don't engage in conversations about socks and laundry and all those things. Those things are for the little people. And that's a catastrophic view to the success of a long-term relationship. Because you must have that conversation, sadly, about the socks and the bathroom towel.
You've got to have it and you've got to have it with generosity and enthusiasm.
LAUGHTER
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Chapter 8: How does Alain de Botton suggest we redefine love for lasting relationships?
It's just terrible. That loss, it feels like you've lost a part of yourself that you didn't even know you had.
Yes. And then, of course, the tragic thing is that after a while, this person that you thought you would die if you didn't see, you know, is lying beside you naked. You're both watching television. Their body is no longer anything. They're just, you know, just a presence there. And you think, what's going on? We are terribly spoiled.
And I think the great question is, how do we recover appreciation over time? You know, this is a massive problem in relationships because, you know, You know, we're not very good at holding on to a sense of appreciation of something that's always around. You know, if you live in a beautiful city, after a few years, you forget that it even exists.
You fail to appreciate the people around you that are special, etc. And it's often only the thought of a rupture, of an end. that can reawaken. So suddenly somebody's been diagnosed with something or somebody's got to leave and suddenly you remember, my goodness, I prize them so much.
But, you know, it would be so nice if we remembered the specialness of the people who are special to us before, you know, the diagnosis. And I think this to some extent is what art does, you know, works of art. are very often about, they're kind of attempting to reignite appreciation. It's like Monet shows you a field of poppies. You'd kind of forgotten all about poppies in springtime.
You hadn't really thought about it in a long while. And suddenly you look at this canvas and you think, oh my God. Oh, it's fabulous. How have I lived without this thing? And in a way you can do that with your partner too. You need the Monet of the bedrooms.
this romantic love ideal? Is this actually a harmful story we tell each other when we actually have to go about the real business of love? This is the thorny business of monogamy because one of the characters does have an affair in your book, Alain.
There are people who say that monogamy is kind of this stupid and a vulgar concept, that it comes out of jealousy, possessiveness, that kind of thing. What do you think about all that?
Look, I think there's an awful lot of kind of censorship and censorious behavior around adultery. I don't think it's a great thing, but I think it's something that needs to be understood. And often it's more complicated than it looks. Sometimes a lot of affairs are started by people, not because they don't care about their partner, but because caring has become problematic in some way.
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