Sublime

Hochschild notes that “the authors of advice books act as emotional investment counselors. They do readings of broad social conditions and recommend to readers of various types, how, how much and in whom to ‘invest’ emotional attention.”45

So one of the things I tell young couples is that they need to be open to the fact that they will work differently from each other and from the families they grew up in, and that they have to respect that, and listen to that. In dating, people break up over these things and they miss the opportunity to really get to know the other person. They dism

“You should look for a chemistry that’s a six or seven and a compatibility that’s a nine,”

Marriage isn’t a constant passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane nonprofit business. And that, they say, can be really, really nice. Having a solid, like-minded teammate in life is pleasurable in its own way, and for most people, it’s certainly better than not having one at all.

Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is therefore merely a case of identifying a specific kind of dissatisfaction we can bear rather than an occasion to escape from grief altogether.