Agnes Callard
PAUL BLOOM ASKS, “Do angry people make the best romantic partners?” “Best” is a tricky word here, but speaking only for myself, I would not think that the “best” partner for me would be someone who never became angry or even someone who became angry less frequently than my husband does.
I am not perfect. Sometimes I am insufficiently loving, appreciative, or attentive; sometimes I do not try hard enough to overcome my faults; and sometimes I behave in ways that are outright disrespectful. Because he loves me, my husband doesn’t just observe or notice my disrespect, he directly undergoes or experiences it. My disrespect hits him where it hurts, and his anger hits back, and hurts me. If he became less sensitized to how I act, or if I became less sensitive to his anger, I would not see that as an improvement in our relationship. Rather, I would think that we had come to matter less to one another.