The Course of Love by Alain de Botton Page B

very nicest, most sympathetic, most loyal people in the vicinity, the ones least likely to have harmed us, but the ones most likely to stick around while we pitilessly rant at them.
    The accusations we make of our lovers make no particular sense. We would utter such unfair things to no one else on earth. But our wild charges are a peculiar proof of intimacy and trust, a symptom of love itself—and in their own way a perverted manifestation of commitment. Whereas we can say something sensible and polite to any stranger, it is only in the presence of the lover we wholeheartedly believe in that can we dare to be extravagantly and boundlessly unreasonable.
    A few weeks after their return from Prague, a new and far larger problem arises. Rabih’s boss, Ewen, calls a team meeting. After a decent last eight months, the work pipeline is again looking barren, he confides. Not everyone currently employed by the firm will be able to stay on board unless an amazing project turns up soon. In the corridor afterwards, Ewen takes Rabih aside.
    â€œYou’ll understand, of course,” he says. “It won’t be anything personal. You’re a good man, Rabih!” People who are planning to sack you should really have the decency and courage not also to want you to like them, reflects Rabih.
    The threat of unemployment plunges him into gloom and anxiety. It would be hell to try to find another job in this city, he knows. He’d probably have to move, and then what would Kirsten do? He is threatening to fail in his most basic responsibilities as a husband. What madness it was, all those years ago, to think he could have acareer that would combine financial stability with creative fulfillment. It was a mix of childishness and petulance, as his father always hinted.
    Today his walk home takes him past St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. He’s never been inside before—the façade has always seemed gothically gloomy and uninviting—but, in his perturbed and panic-stricken mood, he decides to have a look around and ends up in a niche off the nave, in front of a large painting of the Virgin Mary, who gazes down at him with sorrowful and kindly eyes. Something in her sympathetic expression touches him, as if she knew a little about Ewen Frank and the shortfall of work and wanted to reassure him of her own ongoing faith in him. He can feel tears coming to his eyes at the contrast between the challenging facts of his adult life and the kindness and tenderness in this woman’s expression. She seems to understand and yet not condemn. He is surprised when he looks at his watch and realizes that it’s been a quarter of an hour. It’s a sort of madness, he concedes, for an atheist of Muslim descent to find himself in a candlelit hall at the foot of a portrait of a foreign deity to whom he wants to offer his tears and confusion. Still, he has few alternatives, there not being many people left who still believe in him. The main burden of responsibility has fallen on his wife, and that means asking rather a lot of an ordinary, non-canonized mortal.
    At home, Kirsten has made a zucchini, basil, and feta salad for dinner from a recipe of his. She wants to know all the details about the work crisis. When did Ewen tell them this? How did he put it? How did the others react? Will there be another meeting soon? Rabih starts to answer, then snaps:
    â€œWhy do you care about these incidental facts? It just is what it is: a big mess.”
    He throws down his napkin and starts pacing.
    Kirsten wants a blow-by-blow account because that’s how she copes with anxiety: she hangs on to and arranges the facts. She doesn’t want to let on directly quite how worried she is. Her style is to be reserved and focus on the administrative side. Rabih wants to scream or break something. He observes his beautiful, kindly wife, on whom he has become a constant burden. Eight times a year at least they have scenes a little