Alain de Botton: Why We Marry the Wrong Person
In his popular 2016 opinion article Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person in the New York Times, Alain de Botton writes: "It’s one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person. Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.” [...] "The problem is that before
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh: When You Love Someone
"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in
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Sophie Gilbert: Richard E Grant Documented His Grief
Sophie Gilbert interviewed Richard E Grant, who documented his grief following the loss of his wife: "Why should grief be hidden, if sharing it feels cathartic? Why should people grieving spouses, parents, children do so quietly? Why is our innate response to people who are experiencing profound loss to duck and cover? “I think that it’s [people’s] fear that they’re either going to be intruding or that you’re going to fall apart like a jelly on the pavement,” Grant said. He s
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Mark Vahrmeyer: Disappointment
"B]eing able to tolerate disappointment in life, ourselves and others, is part of being a mature human being who is able to navigate the world and build something – relationships and a life of substance. It will not be perfect, but it will be real." — Mark Vahrmeyer Photograph by Nicolas Jossi
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Philippa Perry: Being Enough
"When we are born, become a child, an adult, do you know what is enough to be enough? Existing. That’s it. A dependent baby is enough being a dependent baby, there is no shame in that, it’s enough to be a child, an adolescent, an adult. It’s enough just to be." — Philippa Perry, 2025. https://philippaperry.substack.com/p/ask-philippa-i-thought-success-would https://substack.com/@philippaperry
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