"I've been working on a new theory and like most of my theories, it's a pretty self-serving one. In every romantic relationship there is a capable, responsible person and there is a pathetic, bungling, ineffectual idiot. No prizes for guessing which one I am. I know I've talked a lot of shit about my husband in this column over the years, but even I would draw the line at calling him a "pathetic, bungling, ineffectual idiot" on a news website."
"The reason I'm so incompetent is because I stopped maturing the second I met Seb. And unfortunately for him, I met him at 21, when I was borderline feral and could barely be trusted to feed myself three meals a day, often gleaning precious calories from red wine and rollies. To me, he seemed impossibly mature. I put this notion of his boundless maturity down to the fact that he owned a George Foreman grill."
Many romantic pairings show one partner as capable and the other as ineffectual. The less capable partner can become permanently immature when the other demonstrates steady responsibility early in the relationship. Arrested maturity followed meeting a partner at age 21, leaving the less capable partner dependent on wine and cigarettes and unable to manage basic self-care. Small domestic signals of maturity, such as owning a George Foreman grill and washing bedsheets, reinforced perceptions of the partner's competence. Those perceptions permitted continued immaturity and produced a dynamic in which one partner attributes personal incompetence to the relationship's imbalance of responsibility.
Read at Independent
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