The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

The modern expectation is that there will be equality in all things in the couple—
which means, at heart, an equality of suffering. But calibrating grief to ensure
an equal dosage is no easy task: misery is experienced subjectively, and there is
always a temptation for each party to form a sincere yet competitive conviction
that, in truth, his or her life really is more cursed—in ways that the partner
seems uninclined to acknowledge or atone for. It takes a superhuman wisdom to
avoid the consoling conclusion that one has the harder life.
Kirsten goes to work for enough hours of the week and earns enough money that
she isn’t inclined to be overly grateful to Rabih just for his slightly greater
salary. At the same time, Rabih has taken on enough tasks around the house, and
has been left to fend for himself on a sufficient number of evenings, that he isn’t

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inclined to be overly grateful to Kirsten just for her greater efforts around the
children. Both are engaged with a sufficient share of the other’s primary task not
to be in any mood for unalloyed gratitude.
The difficulties of modern parents can in part be blamed on the way prestige is
distributed. Couples are not only besieged by practical demands at every hour,
they are also inclined to think of these demands as humiliating, banal, and
meaningless, and are therefore likely to be averse to offering pity or praise to
one another, or themselves, just for enduring them. The word prestige sounds
wholly inappropriate when applied to the school run and the laundry because we
have been perniciously trained to think of this quality as naturally belonging
elsewhere, in high politics or scientific research, the movies or fashion. But,
stripped to its essence, prestige merely refers to whatever is most noble and
important in life.
We seem unwilling to allow for the possibility that the glory of our species
may lie not only in the launching of satellites, the founding of companies, and
the manufacturing of miraculously thin semiconductors but also in an ability—
even if it is widely distributed among billions—to spoon yogurt into small
mouths, find missing socks, clean toilets, deal with tantrums, and wipe
congealed things off tables. Here, too, there are trials worthy not of
condemnation or sarcastic ridicule but also of a degree of glamour, so that they
may be endured with greater sympathy and fortitude.
Rabih and Kirsten are suffering partly because they have so seldom seen their
struggles sympathetically reflected in the art they know, which instead tends to
belittle, and to poke puerile fun at the sorts of troubles they face. They cannot
admire their own valor in trying to teach a foreign language to a child who is
squirming in impatient fury; in constantly buttoning coats and keeping track of
hats; in decently maintaining a household of five rooms; in controlling and
mastering moods of despair; and in helping to pull their modest but complicated
domestic enterprise along with every new day. They will never be outwardly
distinguished or earn large sums of money; they will die in obscurity and
without the laurels of their community, and yet the good order and continuity of
civilization nevertheless depend to some tiny but vital degree on their quiet,
unnoticed labors.
Were Rabih and Kirsten able to read about themselves as characters in a
novel, they might—if the author had even a little talent—experience a brief but
helpful burst of pity at their not at all unworthy plight, and thereby perhaps learn
to dissolve some of the tension that arises on those evenings when, once the

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children are in bed, the apparently demoralizing and yet in truth deeply grand
and significant topic of the ironing comes up.

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Adultery

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