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  • 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 are 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 are in difficulties what we may primarily be seeking from our partners

  • is a sense that they understand what we are going through. We are 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 they were misunderstanding us. Much that troubles us has a structure akin

  • to vertigo; our worry isn’t exactly reasonable but were unsettled all the same. We can,

  • for example, continue to feel guilty about letting down our parents, no matter how nice

  • to them weve actually been. Or we can feel very worried about money even if were 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 were failures whove

  • messed up everything weve ever doneeven if, in objective terms, we seem to be doing

  • pretty well. We can obsess that weve forgotten to pack something even though weve taken

  • a lot of care and can, in any case, buy 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 though 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 answerswe 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 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 thelogicalpoint 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 insights of psychology. Of

  • course our minds are prey to fantasms, illusions, projections and neurotic terrors. Of course

  • were afraid of many things that don’t exist in the so-called real world. But such

  • phenomena are not so muchillogicalas deserving of the application of a deeper

  • logic based on a sympathy for the complexities of emotional life. Our sense of whether were

  • 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 is bound up with long-buried and tortuous emotions of shame and a fear

  • around competing and dealing with another’s 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 are 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 OK 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 have neglected their needs. If

  • two people were being properlylogicalin the deepest sense of the wordthat

  • is, truly alive to all the complexities of emotional functioningrather than squabbling

  • around the question ofWhy 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?’ That would be real logic.

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It seems odd at first to imagine that we might get angry, even maddened, by a partner because

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