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 suspicion 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 impatience let's imagine someone who comes to their partner complaining of vertigo 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 were to 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 we'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 by 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 the 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 are prey to 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 tortuous emotions of shame and a 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 the deepest 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
hurt or been 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 chat with other students of the school of life you
