Couples Are Not Made of Two People
Most conversations about couples start from the wrong place. They ask whether two people are compatible, whether they fit, whether they share values, interests, opinions, beliefs, or communication styles. As if a relationship were a puzzle where the right pieces simply lock into place and remain there. But what we encounter in a couple is not simply another person. What we encounter is another structure. Attraction does not follow fixed rules. Sometimes we are drawn to what mirrors us. Not only physically, although that happens more often than we like to admit, but structurally. We recognize our own way of desiring, believing, thinking, or suffering in the other. We love ourselves through them. At other times we are drawn to the opposite. To what transgresses our limits, unsettles our certainties, or embodies what we have renounced or cannot allow ourselves to be. Both movements coexist, and neither guarantees harmony. Each of us arrives already organized around certain ways of relatin...