Read Online The Course of Love by Alain de Botton - Free Book Online Page A

Two cups of tea later, they have agreed to drive back to Ikea, where they eventually manage to pick out some glasses that they will both succeed in tolerating for the rest of their lives: twelve tumblers fromthe Svalka line.

Sulks
    For a good while, everyone else feels superfluous to them. They don’t want to see any of the friends on whom they each depended in the long years before their meeting. But then guilt and a renewed curiosity gradually get the better of them. In practice this means seeing more of Kirsten’s friends, as Rabih’s are scattered around the world. Kirsten’s Aberdeen University gang congregate in the Bow Bar on Fridays. It’s way across town from their flat but it offers a great range of whiskies and craft beers—although, on the night Kirsten persuades Rabih to visit, he settles for a sparkling water. It’s not because of his religion specifically, he has to explain (five times); he’s just not really in the mood for a drink.
    â€œ ‘Husband and wife’! Wow!” says Catherine, a trace of mockery in her voice. She is against marriage and responds best to people who confirm her bias. Of course, the phrase husband and wife still sounds a bit odd to Rabih and Kirsten as well. They likewise often place the titles in ironic quotation marks to mitigate their weight and incongruity, for they don’t feel anything like the sort of peoplethey tend to associate with the words, which evoke characters far older, more established, and more miserable than they take themselves to be. “Mrs. Khan is here!” Kirsten likes to call out when she comes home, playing with a concept that remains only distantly believable to either of them.
    â€œSo, Rabih, where do you work?” asks Murray, who is gruff, bearded, in the oil industry, and a onetime admirer of Kirsten’s at university.
    â€œAt an urban-design firm,” Rabih tells him, and feels distinctly like a girl, as he does sometimes in the presence of more solid males. “We do civic spaces and spatial zoning.”
    â€œHang on, mate,” says Murray, “you’ve lost me already.”
    â€œHe’s an architect,” Kirsten clarifies. “He’s done houses and offices as well. And hopefully he’ll do more when the economy picks up again.”
    â€œI see: Sitting out the recession in these dark parts of the kingdom, are we, before bursting back into the limelight to put up the next Great Pyramid of Giza?”
    Murray chortles a bit too loudly at his own unfunny jibe, but it’s not this that bothers Rabih; rather, it’s the way Kirsten joins in, cradling in her hand what remains of her pint, inclining her head towards her old college buddy and laughing heartily along with him, as though something quite amusing really has been said.
    Rabih stays quiet on the way home, then claims he’s tired, answers with the famous “Nothing” when asked what’s wrong, and—once they are inside the flat, which still smells of fresh paint—heads into the den with the sofa bed in it and slams the door shut behind him.
    â€œOh, come on!” she says, raising her voice to be heard.“At least tell me what’s going on.”
    To which he replies, “Fuck you, leave me alone.” Which is sometimes how fear can sound.
    Kirsten brews herself some tea, then goes to the bedroom, insisting to herself—not entirely truthfully—that she has no idea what her new husband (who truly did look an odd sight in the Bow Bar) can possibly be so upset about.
    At the heart of a sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is clearly not worthy