it seems odd at first to imagine that we
might get angry even maddened by a
partner because they were in the course
of a discussion proving to be too
reasonable and too logical we are used
to thinking highly of reason and logic
we’re not normally enemies of evidence
and rationality how then could these
ingredients become problematic in the
course of love but from close up
considered with sufficient imagination
our suspicions can make a lot of sense
when we’re in difficulties what we may
primarily be seeking from our partners
is a sense that they understand what
we’re going through we’re not looking
for answers the problems may be too
large for there to be any obvious ones
so much as comfort reassurance and
fellow-feeling
in the circumstances the deployment of
an overly logical stance may come across
not as an act of kindness but as a
species of disguised in patience let’s
imagine someone who comes to their
partner complaining of vertigo but the
fear of heights is usually manifestly
unreasonable the balcony obviously isn’t
about to collapse there’s a strong iron
balustrade between us and the abyss the
building has been repeatedly tested by
experts we may know all this
intellectually but it does nothing to
reduce our sickening anxiety in practice
if a partner would have patiently begin
to explain the laws of physics to us we
wouldn’t be grateful we would simply
feel that they were misunderstanding us
much that troubles us has a structure
akin to vertigo our worry isn’t exactly
reasonable but we’re unsettled all the
same we can for example continue to feel
guilty about letting down our parents no
matter how nice to them we’ve actually
been or we can feel very worried about
money
even if we’re objectively economically
quite safe we can feel horrified by our
own appearance even though no one else
judges our face or body harshly or we
can be certain that we’re failures
who’ve messed up everything we’ve ever
done even if in objective terms we seem
to be doing pretty well
we can obsess that we’ve forgotten to
pack something even though we’ve taken a
lot of care and can in any case buy
almost everything at the other end or we
may feel that our life will fall apart
if we have to make a short speech even
though thousands of people make quite
bad speeches every day and their lives
continue as normal when we recount our
worries to our partner we may receive a
set of precisely delivered unimpassioned
logical answers we have been good to our
parents we have packed enough toothpaste
etc answers that are both entirely true
and yet unhelpful as well and so in
their own way enraging it feels as if
the excessive logic of the other person
has led them to look down on our
concerns because reasonably speaking we
shouldn’t have our fears or worries the
implication is that no sane person would
have them our partners make us feel a
bit mad the one putting forward the
so-called logical point of view
shouldn’t be surprised by the angry
response they receive they are
forgetting how weird and beyond the
ordinary rules of Reason all human minds
can be their own included the logic they
are applying is really a species of
brute common sense that refuses the
deeper insights of psychology of course
our minds operator phantasms illusions
projections and neurotic terrors of
course we’re afraid of many things that
don’t exist in the so-called real world
but such phenomena are not so much
illogical as deserving of the
application of a deeper logic based on a
sympathy for the complexities of
emotional life our sense of whether
we’re attractive or not isn’t about what
we actually look like it follows a
so-called logic that goes back to
childhood and how loved we were made to
feel by those we depended on the fear of
public speaking can be bound up with
long buried and torturous emotions of
shame and fear around competing and
dealing with others Envy an excessively
logical approach to fears discounts
their origins and concentrates instead
on why we shouldn’t have them which is
maddening when we’re in pain it’s not
that we actually want our partner to
stop being reasonable
we want them to apply their intelligence
to the task of
reassurance we want them to enter into
the weirder bits of our own experience
by remembering their own we want to be
understood for being the mad animals we
all are and then comforted and consoled
that it will probably all be okay anyway
then again it could be that the
application of excessive logic isn’t an
accident or form of stupidity it may
just be an act of revenge
perhaps the partner is giving brief
logical answers to our worries because
their efforts to be more sympathetic
towards us in the past have gone nowhere
perhaps we’ve neglected their needs if
two people were being properly logical
in a deeper sense of the word that is
truly alive to all the complexities of
emotional functioning rather than
squabbling around the question of why
are you being so rational when I’m in
pain the person on the receiving end of
superficial logic should gently change
the subject and ask is it possible I’ve
her to be neglecting you now that would
be real logic if you liked this film
download our app where you can view all
our videos read articles from The Book
of Life and chats with other students of the School of Life
might get angry even maddened by a
partner because they were in the course
of a discussion proving to be too
reasonable and too logical we are used
to thinking highly of reason and logic
we’re not normally enemies of evidence
and rationality how then could these
ingredients become problematic in the
course of love but from close up
considered with sufficient imagination
our suspicions can make a lot of sense
when we’re in difficulties what we may
primarily be seeking from our partners
is a sense that they understand what
we’re going through we’re not looking
for answers the problems may be too
large for there to be any obvious ones
so much as comfort reassurance and
fellow-feeling
in the circumstances the deployment of
an overly logical stance may come across
not as an act of kindness but as a
species of disguised in patience let’s
imagine someone who comes to their
partner complaining of vertigo but the
fear of heights is usually manifestly
unreasonable the balcony obviously isn’t
about to collapse there’s a strong iron
balustrade between us and the abyss the
building has been repeatedly tested by
experts we may know all this
intellectually but it does nothing to
reduce our sickening anxiety in practice
if a partner would have patiently begin
to explain the laws of physics to us we
wouldn’t be grateful we would simply
feel that they were misunderstanding us
much that troubles us has a structure
akin to vertigo our worry isn’t exactly
reasonable but we’re unsettled all the
same we can for example continue to feel
guilty about letting down our parents no
matter how nice to them we’ve actually
been or we can feel very worried about
money
even if we’re objectively economically
quite safe we can feel horrified by our
own appearance even though no one else
judges our face or body harshly or we
can be certain that we’re failures
who’ve messed up everything we’ve ever
done even if in objective terms we seem
to be doing pretty well
we can obsess that we’ve forgotten to
pack something even though we’ve taken a
lot of care and can in any case buy
almost everything at the other end or we
may feel that our life will fall apart
if we have to make a short speech even
though thousands of people make quite
bad speeches every day and their lives
continue as normal when we recount our
worries to our partner we may receive a
set of precisely delivered unimpassioned
logical answers we have been good to our
parents we have packed enough toothpaste
etc answers that are both entirely true
and yet unhelpful as well and so in
their own way enraging it feels as if
the excessive logic of the other person
has led them to look down on our
concerns because reasonably speaking we
shouldn’t have our fears or worries the
implication is that no sane person would
have them our partners make us feel a
bit mad the one putting forward the
so-called logical point of view
shouldn’t be surprised by the angry
response they receive they are
forgetting how weird and beyond the
ordinary rules of Reason all human minds
can be their own included the logic they
are applying is really a species of
brute common sense that refuses the
deeper insights of psychology of course
our minds operator phantasms illusions
projections and neurotic terrors of
course we’re afraid of many things that
don’t exist in the so-called real world
but such phenomena are not so much
illogical as deserving of the
application of a deeper logic based on a
sympathy for the complexities of
emotional life our sense of whether
we’re attractive or not isn’t about what
we actually look like it follows a
so-called logic that goes back to
childhood and how loved we were made to
feel by those we depended on the fear of
public speaking can be bound up with
long buried and torturous emotions of
shame and fear around competing and
dealing with others Envy an excessively
logical approach to fears discounts
their origins and concentrates instead
on why we shouldn’t have them which is
maddening when we’re in pain it’s not
that we actually want our partner to
stop being reasonable
we want them to apply their intelligence
to the task of
reassurance we want them to enter into
the weirder bits of our own experience
by remembering their own we want to be
understood for being the mad animals we
all are and then comforted and consoled
that it will probably all be okay anyway
then again it could be that the
application of excessive logic isn’t an
accident or form of stupidity it may
just be an act of revenge
perhaps the partner is giving brief
logical answers to our worries because
their efforts to be more sympathetic
towards us in the past have gone nowhere
perhaps we’ve neglected their needs if
two people were being properly logical
in a deeper sense of the word that is
truly alive to all the complexities of
emotional functioning rather than
squabbling around the question of why
are you being so rational when I’m in
pain the person on the receiving end of
superficial logic should gently change
the subject and ask is it possible I’ve
her to be neglecting you now that would
be real logic if you liked this film
download our app where you can view all
our videos read articles from The Book
of Life and chats with other students of the School of Life
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