So you tell me who is a better Valentine's Day role model.No film director has ever been able to integrate dreams and narrative as seamlessly as Buñuel and his 1972 film The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie is one of his surrealist masterpieces. On his deathbed, he pulled an apparently bizarre passive-aggressive move and left her only his "second-best bed." On his deathbed, he told Emma, "Remember what a good wife you have been." Shakespeare, the king of romantic love, the author of passionate sonnets, had what seems to be a pretty crappy marriage, living apart from his wife most of his adult life. "I will always be true to you, because having an affair sounds exhausting."īy the way, Charles Darwin had an exceedingly happy marriage, by all accounts, and had ten children. But as of now, in your current state, I love you very much." If you start a Ponzi scheme or build an underground bunker, I will probably stop loving you. "I love you very much, but not unconditionally. The cards would contain sweet little notes like: "The benefits of being married to you outweigh the costs." For next year, I'm considering starting a Kickstarter campaign to create a more rational and balanced line of Valentine's Day products.Ĭandy Hearts would be mixed equally with Candy Frontal Cortices. Acknowledge that love can be wonderful and sublime, but it can also be destructive and deadly, a gateway to all sorts of horrors like stabbings, alimony, lies, and relationships with Chris Brown. But that's just condescending.Īnother option: Keep Valentine's Day, but make it more realistic. Like how Berkeley replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. One option: We could replace Valentine's Day with Single Happy People Day. Do they really need their own day? It's like if they had a holiday to celebrate rich people or pretty people or healthy people. Research shows people in loving relationships are generally happier and tend to live longer. My wife and I each built up resentment to the annual glorification of couplehood during our many long years of singlehood. We agree that it's a wildly unfair holiday created by and for America's smuggest. We could use a little more cost-benefit thinking in our romance.īoth my wife and I have long been Valentine's Day Grinches. It is intolerable to think of spending one's whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working."ĭarwin's list may seem absurd, like something John Cleese would do in a sketch mocking repressed British bluebloods, but to me it's poetry. He had concluded, as he put it, "Marriage, marriage, marriage, QED. He proposed to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, instead of buying a dog. In the end, Darwin did choose marriage and female chit-chat, even though it meant less time with his bros, aka the clever men at clubs. "Home, & someone to take care of house"."Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one".On that same piece of paper, he wrote of the rewards of marriage:
"Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle.".He scribbled down the benefits of remaining single, which included, among other things: He did what a rational Victorian gentleman might do: He wrote a pro-con list. I speak of Charles Darwin.īack in 1838, when Darwin was considering proposing marriage (to his cousin, by the way), he didn't rush in. I speak not of Shakespeare or Neruda or Robert Plant. On this Valentine's Day, I want to pay tribute to one of the great poets of love.
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