Why We Sulk and How Not To

one of the most exciting aspects of the
early days of a relationship can be the
sense that a lover understands us
without us needing to speak too much
with other people we’re always having to
explain ourselves at length even when we
do they frequently struggle to grasp our
drift but a true lover on the other hand
seems to get us almost immediately even
in the finer grained aspects of our
personalities no sooner have we tried to
explain for example our feelings towards
autumn evenings or that bit in a song we
like when the violins start to rise that
they generously step in and say I know I
know
seemingly ready to confirm our every
sensation and idea this is a profoundly
beautiful and exciting discovery but it
can give rise to a hugely troubling
dynamic in terms of the long-term
success of relationships because the
view that a good lover must intuitively
understand us is over time one of the
most dangerous suppositions responsible
for a catastrophic outbreak of sulking
sulking is a highly distinctive
phenomenon within the psychology of love
crucially we don’t just sulk with anyone
we reserve our sulks for people we
believe should understand us but happen
on a given occasion not to we could
explain what’s wrong to them of course
but if we did so it would mean that they
had failed to understand us intuitively
and therefore that they were not worthy
of love a sulk is one of the odder gifts
of love our incensed background belief
that a good lover
should just know explains why on the
evening when they unwittingly causes
offence at a party will sit quietly in
the car on the way home and will reply
with a simple noting when they inquire
if anything is up and when we get home
we’ll disappear straight into the
bathroom and bolt the door and when they
ask again please just tell me what’s
wrong we’ll remain silent with our arms
folded because we implicitly believe
that a true lover someone really worthy
of our affection would naturally be able
to read our intentions through the
bathroom panel through our outer casing
and
into the caverns of our burnt and pain
Souls sulking has its touching sides
evoking the enormous faith that we place
in our partners capacities to interpret
us but part of becoming an adult must
surely be to believe that we cannot
fairly continue to expect others to read
our minds if we’ve not previously deemed
to lay out their contents through the
admittedly very cumbersome medium of
words even the most intelligent
sensitive lover cannot be expected to
continue to navigate around us without a
lot of patiently articulated verbal
indications of our desires and
intentions those charming early Lucky
guesses about what our lovers feel
should not fool us for too long even in
very successful relationships there’s
only a tiny amount that a lover should
ever be expected to know about their
beloved without it having been explained
in language we shouldn’t get furious
when our lovers don’t guess right rather
than bolting our mouths and retreating
into the comforting silence of a sulk we
should have the courage always to try
and explain [Music]