The price of pride

My sister S is having a rough time. Her boyfriend, A, has left her. Not because there is anything wrong with their relationship in itself. There isn't. They are as good a couple as you could wish to meet: they never argue and although their interests don't much coincide, they are comfortable with each other. But A is Kosovan, having come to the UK as a refugee, and he cannot get a good job in London. He and S have talked about having children, and he has concluded that he will not be able to support S and a child, so must leave her, return to Kosovo and make his life there.

S is distraught. Not only has she lost the man she loved, but she feels she has wasted two and a half years on him. The biological clock is ticking furiously for her. She very much wants a child and had believed A was a good choice for their father. Now she has to begin again with a new man, if she can find one.

I can understand why A feels bad about not being able to support a family. I would feel something like the same. Although in theory I don't have a problem with my partner's being the breadwinner, and I and Mrs Zen have lived that way in the past, it doesn't feel quite comfortable. Here my rational, educated mind clashes with my upbringing, because I know it should make no difference who brings in the money but I can't feel it. But I cannot understand why anyone would leave someone they love, rather than find a way to make right what is wrong.

I am an incurable big and little r romantic. I do believe that amor vincit omnia or at least that if you have the amor, you have a fighting chance. I believe it is worth sacrificing everything for it, because without it, life is barren, a wasteland. I believe, at the least, that it is so superior to pride to make the latter worth nothing in the scales that balance the two.

Well, maybe I listen to too much pop, and maybe A doesn't listen to quite enough. But I think he could have learned to love being a househusband or just to accept that S pays the bills. After all, a couple is a team: each gives what they can. Maybe he could have taken some time out to learn English better, to gain more qualifications. Maybe that struck him as too hard a road. Much easier to let pride drive your life and give up on love. Easier but it'll have to be paid for. When he has the job he wants but no one to share his life with, on some cold, long night, he will know that the price of pride can be a broken heart.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:12 pm