Falling in love is a form of madness, a delightful derangement where rationality flees, leaving you blissfully untethered.
In this state, you’re utterly present – mindful, as the gurus say – not because of discipline, but because you want to be.
You’re there for the sheer thrill of the moment, drinking it in like nectar. Thinking becomes an exile. To think is to disconnect, to pull yourself out of the moment and into some gray abstraction.
In love, though, you stop playing the tired old programmess. You stop running on the auto-pilot of routine. Instead, you’re operating from the creative, conscious mind, the part of you that dreams and invents.
And what happens? Life transforms. You enter what we romantically call the honeymoon – your personal slice of Heaven on Earth. Everything glows, every touch electrifies, and the world conspires in your favour.
But then, inevitably, the original way of thinking creeps back in. The endless loop of worries and tasks, the dull hum of inherited habits.
And with it, the early programming – the unexamined scripts you absorbed from your parents, your upbringing, your society – start to replay. Behaviours emerge that your lover never saw in that radiant honeymoon phase. These programmes, benign or toxic, seep into the relationship, bit by bit, like ink blotting clean water.
The partner looks at you, bewildered. Who are you? Where is the person I married?…they ask silently, their eyes reflecting an unfamiliar version of you. They hadn’t fallen for this stranger; this wasn’t part of the deal. And as these programmes surface more and more frequently, the honeymoon fades, replaced by friction and disillusionment.
This is why, tragically, as much as 50% of marriages crumble. They began with two creators, lost in love, only to devolve into a union of programmes. Neither partner signed up for that, and the rupture feels inevitable. The heartbreak isn’t because love itself was a lie; it’s because the creators surrendered to the blueprints within.
Nietzsche’s Kitchen Floor
Nietzsche, that provocateur of paradox, mused that marriage is a conversation – a dialogue, he called it, long and rambling. It’s not the candlelit repartee you envision over duck à l’orange on your honeymoon but rather the unedited, unpunctuated drivel of everyday life.
The sound of two people trying – and often failing – not to talk past each other. If you’re not up for the eternal back-and-forth, Nietzsche sneers, then you’re not ready for the marital rodeo.
And what of these dialogues? Too many, over time, grow stale, like the endless loop of “play something else!” when your partner insists on the same three Spotify playlists. Why? Because one or both conversationalists stop developing, as James Hollis rightly warns in The Middle Passage.
Marriage, he says, falters when one person stifles their growth, shrinking into a resentful shadow. There’s nothing noble in stagnation. Worse still, you doom your spouse to coexist with your bitterness – a human hedgehog, all prickly despair.
The antidote? Keep growing. Life itself a mosaic of fleeting passions and peculiar fascinations. Don’t expect your partner to grow in the same direction – that itself can be competitive, stifling. Encourage them – no, nudge them – to lean into whatever it is that sets their soul humming, that peculiar jolt of electricity unique to their wiring.
Be the kind of person you’d want to talk to, someone worth pulling a chair up for. Otherwise, the “dialogue” devolves into a duet of silence, punctuated by shallow conversation where meaning quietly slips away.
A couple I spoke with gave much away……the husband beamed, his chest puffed with the righteousness of his proclamation: “We’ve never had an argument in our lives!” He was the picture of self-congratulation, a man convinced he’d unlocked some secret code to eternal marital bliss.
But his wife’s face, oh, her face – caught in that fleeting moment of unguarded honesty – told a different story. It wasn’t pride, nor even contentment; it was resignation, the wearied mask of someone who’s made a career of peacekeeping.
I wondered how many unspoken irritations she’d swallowed, how many verbal battles had died in her throat. Really, what’s so wrong with a good row now and then? If anything, the catalyst for makeup sex. A marriage without arguments is like a dinner without seasoning – sure, it’ll keep you alive, but where’s the flavour?
The Glorious Ugly Truth
Marriage isn’t beautiful – at least, not in the way Hallmark or Instagram would have you believe. By comparison, it’s ugly. It’s the worst bits of humanity splattered across years of shared toothpaste tubes.
It’s tantrums over dishwasher-loading techniques, the fug of morning breath, the symphony of snorts and gurgles that erupt during midnight laughter on the kitchen floor.
But here’s the thing: marriage, in all its unvarnished chaos, is astonishing. It’s knowing the person who saw you projectile vomit still reaches for your hand. It’s fighting over socks on the floor but waking up at 3 a.m. to rub their back when the flu has them wrecked. It’s enduring the grotesque and finding, somehow, that you wouldn’t swap it for the pristine, because the grotesque is yours.
The romanticism of marriage isn’t found in curated moments but in the mess – the bedhead, the impromptu kitchen dances, the shared despair when life feels like a collapsing soufflé. It’s the recognition that “forever” doesn’t mean “perfect”; it means “with you, anyway.”
Researcher Brené Brown, bless her Texan boots, stumbled upon a damning indictment of the American emotional palate: three emotions. Just three. Happy, sad, angry – the holy trinity of feelings, apparently sufficient for navigating life in the land of the free.
It’s like trying to paint the Sistine Chapel with only primary colours. Her research, though, pointed to a more complex truth: we need a vocabulary of at least 30 distinct emotional experiences. Why? Because not all feelings are created equal. Some call for action, others for reflection, and some, like guilt, demand a swift apology and possibly chocolates.
Emotions aren’t just there to be felt; they’re diagnostic tools, the body’s internal Morse code. But alas, for many, the message is stuck on repeat: beep-beep-happy, beep-beep-sad, beep-beep-angry.
For the Love of Mothers
And then, children. The grand wrecking ball of domestic peace. Nietzsche didn’t warn us about this, did he? The sleepless nights, the teetering tower of emotional debris that comes with parenthood. It’s no wonder so many couples fracture under its weight. Husbands, heed this: childbirth isn’t a subplot in your wife’s life; it’s a cataclysmic rewrite.
Mothers bend reality to create life, sacrificing health, identity, and even career trajectories in the process. And yet, many men reduce postpartum struggles to “moodiness.” Communication fractures, families meddle, and suddenly, the dialogue Nietzsche praised becomes a shouting match or worse – silence.
The antidote isn’t complicated, though it’s rarely easy: understand, appreciate, listen and talk. Not just about schedules or dwindling finances, but the raw, messy truths of life as co-parents. Because if mothers are the heroes who hold families together, fathers must be the allies who ensure the load doesn’t crush them.
One of the most illuminating pieces of advice I’ve encountered – simple yet profound – was this: listen to understand, not to volley back your reply. Too often, couples mistake dialogue for a competitive sport, each eager to spike the ball over the net rather than absorb the rhythm of the game. But the real intimacy lies in hearing what’s being said, not in composing your counterpoint before the tune has even finished playing.
Marriage: A Nietzschean Carnival
So here’s to the circus of marriage – the imperfect, infuriating, and irreplaceable bonds we forge. To the maddening dialogue, that kitchen-floor laughter, and the grit it takes to keep showing up. It isn’t always beautiful, but oh, it’s worth every dizzying, Nietzschean second.
Graeme Dinnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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