Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities of communication and the emotional disconnect that can arise in relationships when one partner becomes less open and expressive.
In this quote, Jonathan Franzen explores the impact of suppressing genuine emotional exchanges in a relationship. The character reflects on how he has conditioned his partner to be less expressive and more reserved, which ultimately leads to a sense of loss and yearning for the genuine connection they once shared. It highlights the idea that while attempts to control or change someone's emotional expression may seem beneficial in the moment, they can lead to deeper feelings of emptiness and regret when that emotional authenticity is lost.
In practice
In a relationship workshop about emotional expression, this quote could be used to illustrate the consequences of suppressing feelings.
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.
I believe in the institution of marriage, and I intend to keep trying till I get it right.
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.
No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere.
Nearly forty years ago, a distinguished Prime Minister of this country ... said, 'They may not be angels but they are at least our friends.'* I must say that I do not think that we probably demonstrated in that forty years that we are angels yet, but I hope we have demonstrated that we are at least friends.
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