"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Such insight from a man whose life was a bit scrambled itself.
Let's take the quote apart. No one knows what love is. The word traditionally has the greatest number of entries in dictionaries. Everyone has some idea what love means. All are right, all are wrong, nobody knows for certain.
Two things I do know about love. If you really love someone, their welfare is usually given higher priority than your own. And (perhaps the least understood fact of life) love is shown (even measured) by touch more than by words or deeds.
Friendship is not a mystery. Psychologists and others in the social sciences know what friendship is, how to achieve it, where to look for it, how to make it last and how people who are good friends feel about each other. They may not be able to do it themselves, but they know the theory that works.
All of this information is available in academic papers produced by many highly educated people around the world. The trouble is, this information is rarely taught to children, especially to young children who are in the "formative years" of relationship comprehension.
What Nietzsche is saying, in effect, is that if spouses can't be friends, then love alone won't make the marriage last. This despite what the songs have taught us.
We don't teach friendship, as a concept, at any level of education, or preschool when it is most needed.
Yet we wonder why people have trouble forming lasting friendships these days and why so many marriages fail.
Do the arithmetic. We teach children and young adults how to prepare for jobs, but we don't teach them how to build a life.
We should consider carefully who is responsible for this situation, who benefits most from young adults who are prepared for jobs but have little idea how to make fulfilling lives for themselves. When they get into a job, they make their job their life because they have not been taught any different.
Let's do it.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to change education systems so they teach what people need instead of what industries need.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 9
I am impatient, sloppy and dont hold a grudge.
we have had to learn from each other... you have to think.. would I rather be right or married?
Also both spouses have to be able to communicate.
My husband and I have been together for approximately 23 years. He and I are best friends. We have enough differences to compliment each other and just as many similarities that we don't have a lot of arguments.
And of course, it does take work. When one of us is crabby or not feeling well we snap and aren't very nice but in the end, we apologize, we make up and we go on.
I think teaching your children how to argue properly would also probably be most beneficial. I suppose that would come under the same catagory as Mandi's comment that we need to be able to communicate.
Good points as well Marsha.
You both give the same message. It takes work. And a large dose of forgiveness helps too.
great article
thanks
Carol, I would be surprised if Quebec schools teach the mechanics of friendship, as opposed to what amounts to a definition of it. It would be athe difference between teaching and telling.
Candida, the divorce rate in the US was 56% just a couple of years ago.
Some private schools are excellent because they teach the same curriculum as the public schools (they must by law in most places) as well as other skills they believe that kids need. However, some have agendas that support the social set that sponsors the school, meaning that they use the principles of sociology to turn out cookie-cut copies of their parents.
Home schooling concerns me not because of the curriculum (the same as in public schools, for the same reasons as for private schools), but because of the lack of social interaction with peers. Social interaction among kids is not just play or soccer, but even watching how others react and are treated in certain situations where emotions are involved within the classroom. That's hard to define and many people won't believe it. But it's part of the process of socialization. That said, however, most home-schooled kids turn out well.
JJ, what you read is good advice. Don't marry anyone you wouldn't take a bullet for and don't marry anyone who will not share with you an amount of loving touch that many people (who don't know better) would call excessive.
Marinela, you obviously remember that old song. Who sang that, The Carpenters? It's womring around in my head now.