Trust in what our unhappiness is telling us about those we think of as good.

One of the common roots to extreme unhappiness is to want children and not have them.

The statues don't approve of murder, so they're simply showing their unhappiness about it, hence the twisted facial expressions.

Frank answers can spare a couple decades of squabbling. Next, what trouble do I bring into the relationship? How am I difficult to live around? There should be no bristling here. Bearable people have a good handle on their unbearable dimensions. We don't need people to be perfect, we just need them to have a decent sense of how imperfect they are and how much their imperfections are going to cause the other pain. Then, what trouble do you bring into the relationship? How are you difficult to live around? We need agreement on the mutual complications that are being brought to the table. Both people should write their answers down, then show the other their analyses. Can both sides agree on what's most horrible in each person? The more alignment there can be, the less future criticism has to feel like nagging, and the more it can fit into a kinder project of helping someone to change as they would, at their saner moments, wish to change. Then, which bits of my anxiety and unhappiness did I discover were not, after all, your fault? What continued to be difficult even without you around? It's highly tempting when in a relationship to assume that all the misery we face is the fault of the lover. We attribute to the main person in our lives a commanding role in determining our state of mind. But when they're gone, we may be forced to realise a more complex truth – that our low moods and neuroses have their origins, in large part, in us rather than in them. It can, oddly, no longer all be their fault. How did life remain hard, even without them? What might they not be to blame for? Then, what I now appreciate more properly about you is… We're meant never to lose sight of what was great about them, but in reality, we sometimes need the perspective of time to get clearer about their virtues. In the long months since we were together, what sides of them did we realise we most deeply valued? Then, what did I learn from meeting other people? A truly tricky subject, but as we're realising, it's a capacity for eating humble pie that stands a restarted relationship in such good stead.

And judged on this basis, many of us have to admit, in the silence of our minds, that we're not really doing very well. There's so much that every year, and perhaps almost every day, comes along to spoil our ambitions. There's a power struggle at the office, there's a problem in our families, our friends feel superficial or disengaged, our anxieties don't abate and our relationships are scratchy or distant. Our difficulties generate a basic layer of misery, but then a secondary layer is swiftly added to it, caused by an underlying sense that our unhappiness represents a fundamental violation of life's true purpose. Not only are we unhappy, we are unhappy that we are unhappy, in the light of our tightly held belief in the possibility of a state of enduring satisfaction. We're both sad and crushed that we have failed at the single most important goal open to all sane and ambitious humans.

outweigh any minimal amount of discomfort or unhappiness that the animals in the zoo might experience?

That the basis of unhappiness is living not in accord with your own morals.

One big source of unhappiness is boredom.

They pay no attention to the fact they aren't happy and never address the mindset and choices that led to that unhappiness.

generally suffer from poverty and unhappiness and their life's