“Nobody’s perfect,” said a happily married friend and former colleague. She was telling the truth. There’s a good reason for that. It’s similar to why the world isn’t perfect – which is not to say that it might not be, one day. Perfection involves arrival, 100% compatibility. We strive for perfection but don’t know what we would do if we got it. That’s why couples who seem totally in harmony with each other are often bored to the brink of murder. ‘Perfect’ makes no demands for remedy. Whether we like it or not we all aspire to improve – to remedy – at heart.
Loving and living with another person requires some compatibility. ‘Live and let live’ and ‘give and take’ are not idle concepts. If one party to a partnership wishes endlessly to debate philosophy and the other party likes only to play ping-pong there may come a time when the arrangement fails. As a friend with good intentions and a lurid turn of phrase told me when I was fifteen years old ‘four bare legs in a bed do not constitute marriage’.
So the first and most important suggestion about choosing someone to live with forever is ‘don’t look for the perfect’. Happily our constitutions contain an emotional equivalent of Tabasco. It is called Love. It pounces on all the warning signals of irritation and turns them into delightful anomalies, at least for the first six months. It’s a bit like story-telling. The first time you hear a story it is delightful. The second time, you are glad to be reminded of it, may even pick up a nuance or two missed on the first round. The eleventh time, you yawn.
It’s why WhatsApp is so useful for people you want to keep in touch with as opposed to those you want to maul. The line can always go a bit creaky after half an hour. Technology’s greatest achievement is that it sometimes fails.
How to find the middle way – compatibility to face each grisly morning, differences to make each day a worthy ascent. I like to think of it as Courses for Causes. That means you must understand the purpose of each encounter. Is it entertainment, reconciliation, repentance, war, learning, teaching or sheer unadulterated self-indulgance? You would hate a meal that was only ice cream. You might also hate one that never had ice cream on the menu.
Restaurants that have signature dishes simply don’t understand human beings. Human beings that have signature personalities simply don’t understand life partners.
My father’s definition of love was “The gift of self”. He was a kind and generous man who devoted his life to serving King and Country through two World Wars. He was brought up in the British Middle Class style of Suffering is Good For You. Neither the British Middle Class nor the concept of Suffering exist in the same way now. The former made the same mistake as the European Union – it let too many into its ranks too quickly. The latter became unacceptable for the very good reason that it is.
For all that, the ideal partner is one who understands my father’s definition of love and applies it as all good rules should be applied, in moderation. And that is the key conclusion you will reach if you follow the path to an ideal life partner. Moderation is a marvellous idea, in moderation. And moderation in all things brings harmony.
It makes beautiful music as the SIngapore Symphony Orchestra so often shows us.
It makes Happy Couples, as so many of my friends demonstrate.
It could even turn Trump into a great President.
Well, let’s not go totally mad.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Got a good Life Partner story? Please share with us. It’s how we learn. [email protected]
19 January 2025
