"Are you sure that I'm enough for you?" is the question upon which all relationships pivot - the see-saw which occasionally aligns itself with a nearby star, yet just as frequently points groundwards.
If we are fishing for compliments, though, instead of posing the question in all its dead-eyed austerity, we ask with the beginnings of a smile forming around our lips, and we hope that the answer is that we are more than enough: you are without boundaries, and yet still I can traverse any part of you without feeling lost.
The prospect of moving blindly over an infinite terrain is terrifying. Without signposts, which develop when the private language of a couple is expanded, there is no way of understanding moods, gestures, words? Without knowing that I used to wear black every July 13, without knowing that I am scared of cars as toddlers are of monsters, without knowing that I worship cats, how can anyone begin to pare down what seems to be endlessness?
Nothing is endless, of course, except perhaps the universe - yet couples not only delude themselves that this is the case, but eventually give it primacy. Above laughter. Above love. Above intimacy, we raise the imaginary flag of infinity.
British marriage vows spell this out explicitly. In agreeing to love, honour, and obey, we permit our every last thought to be dissected in front of us in a thousand different ways. This is surveillance intimacy, but the machinery does not yet exist to drag out reluctant cognitions into the light.
From the disorientation of a blank terrain, then, we are presented with so many signs that every analysis is spiked on or trips over one or more, and the result is the same dull incomprehension.
Moderation, then, is the best thing. Trapped between the ocean, sick of its vastness, and the signifier which reveals all as it explains nothing, is moderation. Wedding vows should appeal to the possible, and leave the higher echelons of thought to the irresponsible dreamers and poets.
