don’t. It can - from afar - look as if it’s the  most cruel and alarming sort of lottery. Trying to  

explain love to a child or a visitor from another  planet promises to be a perplexing matter indeed:  

all couples on their wedding day are united  in wanting to make things work. Then,  

for reasons beyond anyone’s comprehension, some  of them simply seem to dissolve and others don’t.

To remove some of the terrifying  element of apparent chance  

(and encourage us to work on the  right aspects of our own couples),  

it may be helpful to become deliberately reductive  about the real reasons why breakups occur.

We need - in this regard -  first to discount certain causes  

that gain far too much airtime  relative to their actual likelihoods.  

Of course, sometimes people break up because one  party wants a younger partner. Or because they  

want better sex. Or because they are seeking  a more exciting companion. Or because their  

hobbies or political views have drifted apart.  Or because things have - somehow - grown ‘stale.’

But let’s quickly try to reduce the role  we give to such explanatory factors:  

given the costs of break-ups, given the massive  investments that people make in being together,  

given the chaos generated if there are children,  one can assert with a high degree of confidence  

that almost no one ever splits  up for such familiar reasons.

The real reason lies elsewhere; the real reason  for break up lies in one or both spouse’s sense  

that they have not been heard, that something  very important to them has been disregarded,  

that their point of view has not, at a fundamental  level, been acknowledged and honoured. It doesn’t  

matter what the subject of this non-hearing  happens to be: it could be that they haven’t  

been heard about their views on money, or on  the way the children are being brought up,  

or on how their weekends should be managed,  or on how intimacy occurs or doesn’t occur.

It’s feeling unheard for our  differences that is unbearable;  

it’s never the presence of differences per se.

We don’t break up because a partner doesn’t agree  with us. We could stand not getting what we want.  

We could stand a partner who votes another  way than we do. Or who is no longer as young  

as they once were. Or who has annoying friends. Or  different tastes in holidays. What we can’t stand  

is someone who blocks us when we try to articulate  how troublesome we find these areas of divergence;  

when our unique way of looking at existence  seems a matter of basic indifference,  

that is too lonely and enraging to bear. It’s  better to be single than unseen; after all,  

the unseen are alone anyway, whatever  their ostensible relationship status.

There is a big difference between a partner not  doing what we want and a partner not hearing  

what we want. It’s entirely possible that one  would remain with someone who doesn’t share  

most of our interests - so long as they happen  to accept, and signal an understanding of,  

how much these interests matter to us. It would be  possible for us to live with someone who doesn’t  

want the same sort of sex as we do (or wants  no sex at all), so long as they can at points  

see matters from our position - and can give a  modicum of empathy to our hopes and longings.  

We could be with someone whose needs for  affection run in a different direction,  

so long as they have the courage  to listen to how ours operate.  

We don’t need partners to agree with us on  everything; we need them to give off signs  

that they can accept the scale and legitimacy  of our vision. ‘I understand’ is the phrase that  

could single-handedly rescue more long-term  relationships than any number of anniversary  

celebrations or therapy sessions; it deserves to  known as the most romantic phrase in existence.

There is a lot of hope in this  thesis. If we want to stay together,  

we don’t need to be exceptionally beautiful  or rich. We don’t need to rely on chance.  

We don’t have to have brilliant sex or  a friction free alignments of interests.

We just need to make sure  that we are people who listen;  

who when the partner has something very  important they need to get across to us,  

can bear to take things on board, can bear to  acknowledge an opposite position, can bear to say:  

‘I can see this matters a lot to you… and  I will try my hardest to think about it and  

see what I can do about it.’ From here, it really  doesn’t matter if things radically change or not;  

the vital work will have been done - and  the relationship will have been assured.

People described as ‘defensive’ may have a  thousand charms. But we should know that the most  

flawed open person is preferable to the  most seemingly accomplished defensive one.  

The person we should settle down with  isn’t the most attractive or the cleverest,  

it’s the one who feels no pride or compunction in  readily saying: ‘I can hear what you are saying  

and how much this matters a lot to you…  I get it...’ Or, ‘because I love you,  

this makes me curious, tell me more…’ This person  will surely one day annoy or frustrate us mightily  

(everyone does). We’ll just be highly  unlikely ever to want to break up with them.