It Could Be the End of Curiosity That Dooms Love

That's what writer, chaplain Kerry Egan posits in 'Modern Love' column
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 18, 2017 4:21 PM CDT
End of Curiosity Is What Might Doom Love
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / Marco_Piunti)

When we lose the desire to learn any more about our partner, is the relationship doomed? That's the idea at the heart of author and chaplain Kerry Egan's "Modern Love" column in the New York Times, which starts with a story about how her husband traumatized her the day they left for their honeymoon by informing her that, on the night of his bachelor party, he and four other members of the wedding party had gotten into a drunken fight at a bar and ended up in jail. "Our marriage is based on a lie!" a crying Egan responded. But, upon reflection, she's learned that "not one of us ever has all the information when we get married."

"The state of being married is coming to the realization that the person you have pledged your life to is, at heart, a mystery. There will always be things unknown to you," she writes. And it could be that it's ceasing to be curious about that mystery—even more so than problems that might seem bigger—that truly dooms a relationship. "That’s really what falling in love is, isn’t it? Yearning to know more about a person, the amazement and delight as each layer is peeled back, the realization that you can never get enough of the one you love. Perhaps the death knell of love is not anger or even indifference; it’s losing the desire to know more about your partner." As for her husband, Egan notes that to this day, "I still don’t understand him at all." Full column here. (More love stories.)

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