pain · you feel you may never gain a thing · relationships · wife
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you feel you may never gain a thing, in your relationships — specifically with wife — and you reached for the Stoic voice first. That's what you've named. Listen now to what it answers.
- Stoic
Spirit
mind
The closeness you hear other couples talk about is their reported closeness, which is theirs, on their terms, in their kitchen. Marcus's rule applies as cleanly to marriages as to anything else: how much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, that it may be just and pure. The comparison to other couples is the work that keeps the closeness from arriving in your kitchen. Stop looking at theirs. Look at what you yourself do — toward her, today, in this kitchen. The closeness that is yours is not the closeness they describe. It is the one that grows when you do your own work toward your own wife without comparison.
heart
Stop looking at other couples. Look at what you do toward her, today, in your own kitchen.
connection
You stand in the line of all who stopped measuring their marriage against the marriages they heard about — every husband who turned away from the comparison and toward his actual wife and found her there waiting.
Action
Today, when you catch yourself comparing to another couple, name it: 'that is theirs.' Then turn your attention to one specific thing you can do toward your wife in the next hour.
Reference
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.18
practice
Turning from the comparison toward the actual wife in front of you
principle
Closeness grows from your work toward your wife, not from your measurement against others'
value
Tending your own marriage instead of inventorying the others'