All Fours: A Novel

When we fall in love, we’re not just saying, “My, what a wonderful mind you have, it’ll be a joy to talk with you over the next fifty years.” What we’re actually saying is “My, what a wonderful mind you have; I’m also expecting you to be a great lover, a great father, a wonderful Friday night date, my comforter in times of sorrow, my social sidekic

It might be that our desires change or that our circumstances just don’t line up with an old vision. Either way, many people told me that discarding the picture they had of how their lives would be—sometimes joyfully, sometimes through grieving—was necessary in order to fully embrace something better, or at least accept something different.

And why do these things feel so different to us in the moment than they do to our spouses later?

But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, gi