Growing Up: the point of marriage, monogamy & mysticism

Hey guys,

I just finished reading The Course of Love by Alain de Botton (2016)

(Alain de Botton is the Swiss-born British author and philosopher whose works have been described as a "philosophy of everyday life". He's also the founder of that organisation I'm particularly fond of, the School of Life.)

The book is part fiction, part non-fiction and here's the gist of it:

In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married. They have children. Society tells us this is the end of the story. In fact, it is only the beginning.

We all know the headiness and excitement of love’s early days, but what can be expected over a shared lifetime? We follow our couple – Rabih and Kristen – from the first flush of infatuation through to inevitable disenchantments and then onto the freedom and insights of maturity. The Course of Love is a novel that explores not so much the start of love, as its maintenance over time; the way our ideals bend and reform under the pressures of an average existence, and the magnificent, sometimes frightening, developments we can make as we slowly realise that love is in essence a skill we need to learn rather than an enthusiasm we simply experience.

Here is a passage I thought you might find insightful (and I wonder whether those of you who have stuck with someone over the decades would attest to...)

(de Botton reveals early on that one of the them will end up having an affair, so not too much of a spoiler I hope, but skip this bit if you want to read the book without knowing any of the details first...)

In the wake of the affair, Rabih adopts a different view of the purpose of marriage. As a younger man he thought of it as a consecration of a special set of feelings: tenderness, desire, enthusiasm, longing. However, he now understands that it is also, and just as importantly, an institution, one which is meant to stand fast from year to year without reference to every passing change in the emotions of its participants. It has its justification in more stable and enduring phenomena than feelings: in an original act of commitment impervious to later revisions and, more notably, in children, a class of beings constitutionally uninterested in the daily satisfactions of those who created them.

The more Rabih appreciates how chaotic and directionless his feelings are, the more sympathetic he grows to the idea of marriage as an institution. At a conference, he might spy an attractive woman and want to throw away everything for her sake, only to recognise two days later that he would prefer to be dead than without Kirsten. Or, during protracted rainy weekends, he might wish that his children would grow up and leave him alone until the end of time so he could read his magazine in peace - and then a day later, at the office, his heart would tighten with grief because a meeting threatened to overrun and get him home an hour too late to put the kids to bed.

Against such a quicksilver backdrop, he recognizes the significance of the art of diplomacy, the discipline of not necessarily always saying what one thinks and not doing what one wants, in the service of greater, more strategic ends.

Rabih keeps in mind the contradictory, sentimental and hormonal forces which constantly pull him in a hundred crazed and inconclusive directions. To honour every one of these would be to annul any chance of leading a coherent life. He knows he will never make progress with the larger projects if he can't stand to be, at least some of the time, inwardly dissatisfied and outwardly inauthentic - if only in relation to such passing sensations as the desire to give away his children or end his marriage over a one-night stand with an American urban planner with exceptionally attractive grey-green eyes.

For Rabih it is assigning too great a weight to his feelings to let them be the lodestars by which his life must always be guided. He is a chaotic chemical proposition in dire need of basic principles to which he can adhere during his brief rational spells. He knows to feel grateful for the fact that his external circumstances will sometimes be out of line with what he experiences in his heart. It is probably a sign that he is on the right track.

NB: for those who want to throw up at the idea of marriage as an institution... this is the conclusion that is reached after exploration of whether monogamy makes any sense at all (something that seems to be increasingly popular to question these days?)... highly recommend going on that journey (by reading the book I mean... no comment on whether it's something worth finding out for yourself. Maybe you already have)

This week on Growing Up with Delia Burgess
Ep. 55 - Carolina Wikstrom: finance to Human Design, divorce, motherhood and finding herself again
Carolina Wikstrom is a Human Design Guide helping business owners connect with their unique gifts, talents, and purpose so they can maximise their reach, impact, and revenue. Carolina is Colombian, lives in London, has two children and spent many years working in finance in New York and Canada before she made the pivot into Human Design.

I understand that Human Design is some kind of mix of Kabbalah (from Jewish mysticism), I'Ching (Chinese divination text), Myers-Briggs (personality test), and the chakra system (from Hinduism). And ultimately yes, it’s a system that tells you about your personality based purely on place and time of birth (so astrology). And thus this is a scary conversation for me share. Scary because I worry I will lose credibility by indulging a topic that so many people (including maybe half? this readership) would immediately dismiss as BS / pseudo-science at best or fraud at worst. (I hope I’m not offending the other half of this readership who might love this stuff. Maybe the majority sit somewhere in the middle…?)

Anyway, Carolina was the perfect person to have this conversation with as she has a similar background to me and fully understands my discomfort and hesitancy coming from the world of science, logic, finance etc. to then exploring something that sits very much outside those things…

For the non-believers perhaps you can emphasise with the following... In part my curiosity stems from the observation that millions of humans, across multiple cultures (every culture?) and thousands of years have been interested in these ideas....

(I just googled history of astrology and this is what Britannica came up with:

Astrology: Divination that consists of interpreting the influence of stars and planets on earthly affairs and human destinies. In ancient times it was inseparable from astronomy. It originated in Mesopotamia (c. 3rd millennium BC) and spread to India, but it developed its Western form in Greek civilization during the Hellenistic period. Astrology entered Islamic culture as part of the Greek tradition and was returned to European culture through Arabic learning during the Middle Ages. According to the Greek tradition, the heavens are divided according to the 12 constellations of the zodiac, and the bright stars that rise at intervals cast a spiritual influence over human affairs. Astrology was also important in ancient China, and in imperial times it became standard practice to have a horoscope cast for each newborn child and at all decisive junctures of life. Though the Copernican system shattered the geocentric worldview that astrology requires, interest in astrology has continued into modern times and astrological signs are still widely believed to influence personality.)

A simple explanation from a sceptic could be that universally humans are obsessed with patterns, finding meaning, telling stories, and creating systems to make sense of things which maybe cannot be made sense of. We want to be understood, we want to feel safe, it helps to feel guided. These theories, traditions (and I guess religion in general?) attempt to provide answers and meet these needs. Hmmmm... this argument isn't fully satisfactory to me though, so I shall continue to explore... (anyone who has a more well thought out explanation, I'd love to hear it.)

Enjoy.

xx Delia

P.S. As always, feel free to forward to... someone who is wondering why they got married?

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Hi! I'm Delia Burgess

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