[Music]
one of the most delightful and thrilling
aspects of the early days of a love
affair is the sense that our lover likes
us not only for our obvious qualities
perhaps our looks or our professional
accomplishments but also and far more
touchingly for our less impressive sides
our vulnerabilities our hesitations our
flaws perhaps they're particularly taken
by the gap between our two front teeth
which while it wouldn't impress an
orthodontist
charms them distinctly or perhaps
they're taken by our shyness at busy
parties or a powerfully drawn to that
old pair of pajamas with a bear prints
which we put on on cold winter nights
but which would win no fashion award
this creates a beguiling prospect of
what love might be but one which also
sets up a catastrophic and unfair
expectation the belief that really
loving someone must mean endorsing every
aspect of them their good sides but also
more particularly their weaknesses to
this Pleasant vision may last a few
months into a relationship but
eventually something is likely to
disturb it will notice something about
the lover which is both a floor and not
especially charming perhaps if there are
the bovine way of eating cereal or their
habit of not hanging up towels or their
maddening tendency to withhold crucial
bits of bad news from us
but because of the belief that love
means complete endorsement there is
likely to be an incensed hurt response
from a partner
what is feedback doing in the hallowed
realm of love if you loved me you
wouldn't criticize me can be loves all
too common wounded rallying cry this
protest against teaching from a lover is
so ubiquitous that we forget to notice
its strangeness it represents a very
particular approach to love and not
necessarily the wisest for a more
helpful take we might look back to the
ancient Greeks who had a strikingly
different philosophy of feedback within
love for the Greeks love isn't meant to
be an emotion centered on just anything
at all about the
rightly understood it's a very specific
feeling that targets what happens to be
accomplished perfect virtuous and
intelligent around the other less
impressive things one must be tolerant
and understanding of course the one
isn't expected to love the word love is
supposed to be restricted to a
particular sort of admiration for
perfection connected to this for the
Greeks is a sense that the point of a
relationship is to be a forum in which
two people can help each other to
increase the number of admirable
characteristics they each possess it's
to help them become the best version of
themselves
the Greeks held to a fundamentally
pedagogical level of love they
understood that a relationship gives us
a ringside seat on one another's floors
and potential and therefore believed
that both partners should take it in
turns to act in the role of teacher and
student attempting to educate the other
to become a finer person within the safe
and encouraging confines of Love's
classroom all this is likely to sound
incredibly strange to modern ears the
notion that the point of love is to help
to teach the lover to become a better
version of themselves and therefore that
one might legitimately deliver lengthy
lectures to one's partner on how their
character might be improved
sounds like a freakish dictatorial
betrayal the true nature of love yet in
truth there is a lot of wisdom in the
Greek position for we can interpret many
of the struggles people have in
relationships as being in essence failed
teaching moments moments when one or the
other party attempt to get something
across possibly a very well founded
point then see their lessons rejected in
bitter and hurt tones the reason why the
lessons we try to impart in love's
classroom tend to go so wrong is that
we're respectively very bad teachers and
very bad pupils and part of the reason
is that we don't in the role of teachers
have any real sense that we're even
allowed to teach which makes us panicky
and defensive furthermore what helps
someone to be a good teacher is a
relaxed sense that it doesn't in the end
matter
if the lesson is learned or not a good
maths teacher wants to get the basics of
trigonometry across to the class but if
they're being a bit of juice the teacher
can be calm there'll be another student
cohort along next year but love's
classroom finds us in a far more
agitated state because at the back of
our minds as we try to teach a point is
an utterly panic inducing thought that
we may have committed ourselves to an
idiot who will continue in a range of
erroneous ways for the rest of our days
it's on this basis that we start to
swear belittle and insult our lovers
which is understandable but very
unfortunate because it seems that sadly
no one's ever learned anything under
conditions of humiliation by the time
one's made the partner feel like a fool
the lesson is over it seems that a good
relationship should be a forum in which
we teach each other many things and
gracefully learn in turn if we
understand ourselves properly we'll know
that there are so many sides of us that
need improvement for that reason we
should learn to see love a little as the
ancient Greeks did as a safe arena in
which two people can gently teach and
learn how to grow into better versions
of themselves teaching and learning
doesn't symbolize an abandonment of love
it's the very basis upon which we can
develop into better lovers and more
broadly better people
you