Liberty

«Two fears alternate in marriage, the one of loneliness and the other of bondage. The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. For one person who fears being so tied there are three who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, nor the hen a falcon. The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic that it should be young men who dread loneliness and get married, and beautiful girls who worry most about becoming old maids.

First love is the one love worth having, yet the best marriage is often a second marriage, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom has spent itself; not till then does a man know whether he is of the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breaking-ups are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode, -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other- they set about accomplishing their common destruction.»

Cyril Connoly's "The unquiet Grave" - page 12.

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