When Love Isn't Easy

This video explores the complexities of romantic relationships, highlighting the challenges and emotional turmoil that can arise. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and accepting the difficulties in love, rather than seeking perfect solutions, and offers a philosophical perspective on the human condition.

You're up in the middle of the night, and again you're in trouble in love. You had another discussion over dinner. You tried to get them to see that sometimes because of X, you do Y, and they respond with Z, and it's unpleasant. They countered, at first politely and then with mounting irritation, that even though A, you think B, and that's why C is maddening to them. Both of you tried, pretty valiantly, to get your points across with calm and kindness. Both of you managed to be more or less polite, more or less restrained, more or less grown-up. By the end of two hours of conversation, you parted in an almost affectionate way and went to sleep in different rooms. But it's not enough, and you know it. That's why you're up at 3 a.m., hearing the rainfall. You're pursued by questions. What do you keep doing wrong in love? Do you even belong together with this obviously very nice person? Why is it so hard? You briefly wonder what it would be like to leave. You picture some new dates, but the picture soon curdles. The horror of starting all over again with someone new. You'd miss your partner. You have a lot of shared memories. There used to be, until quite recently, considerable hope. You don't know what to do. If only there was someone to speak to, a wise, kind person who would know how to cut through this. Then you realize that more than a solution, what you really want is someone who could understand how hard it is that there isn't one. Someone who would just say, "I know, I know." Sometimes we don't need solutions. We need sympathy for our impasses. We need to know that we're not idiots for having the challenges we have. That other, sensible people have been here too. That it could almost be okay to have this difficulty forever. Maybe it's just one of life's givens. That's when a bracing, pessimistic philosophy is called for. The sort that says, of course you're miserable. You're alive. Of course it's a mess. Welcome to existence. Of course love is a bit impossible. You're a human being. This isn't the first choice, naturally. You wanted to sort this out perfectly, the way you like to sort out other things perfectly—at work, in domestic life. But this isn't a cupboard or an accounting document. The number of people who have this area of life properly sorted out is minuscule, perhaps below one percent. You have failed here, that's for sure. But you're not exceptionally stupid for that. You're averagely mad, averagely emotionally perturbed. And what you're trying to do is something exceptional.