Romance feeds on obstacles, short excitations, and partings; marriage, on the contrary, is made up of wont, daily propinquity, growing accustomed to one another. Romance calls for “the faraway love” of the troubadours; marriage, for love of “one’s neighbour.” Where, then, a couple have married in obedience to a romance, it is natural that the first time a conflict of temperament or of taste becomes manifest the parties should ask themselves: “Why did I marry?” And it is no less natural that, obsessed by the universal propaganda in favour of romance, each should seize the first occasion to fall in love with somebody else.
ATTRIBUTION:
Denis De Rougemont (b. 1906), Swiss author. “The Significance of the Breakdown,” Love in the Western World, trans. by M. Belgion, Harcourt (1940).
