Who Are You Going With?

No matter who the woman is, if a man sees her morning and night, every day, he will start to find things he dislikes, and may even come to hate her. No doubt it is the same for a woman.

A married life like that is a hollow thing. Surely it is the visiting marriage, in which husband and wife live apart and meet from time to time, that keeps a man and a woman from tiring of each other even as the years go by?

For a woman, too, it must be a fresh and charming thing when the man she loves drops by on a whim, stays the night, and then goes home.

These are not my words. They were written some seven hundred years ago by the poet Yoshida Kenko in his book “Essays in Idleness”.

As you will know, “Essays in Idleness” is counted, along with Sei Shonagon’s “The Pillow Book” and Kamo no Chomei’s “An Account of My Hut”, as one of the three great classics of the Japanese essay. Its 244 sections see clean through the ways of the world, and even today they touch the heart.

Indeed, looking at the world around us, the very lips that once trembled, “I can’t live without you,” before long declare, “The best husband is a healthy one who’s never at home.” So Kenko is not so very wide of the mark.

And it is not only between men and women. Within families, too, a daughter-in-law who lives under the same roof fares worse than one who lives far away and visits now and then. It is the same principle. Is keeping one’s distance the only way to keep things fresh?

And yet, if I suggest, “Why don’t I go off travelling on my own, and give you a break from me?”, all I can expect is a pointed “Who are you going with?” in a voice lower than I have ever heard. I rather suspect that jealousy, too, is one of the reasons men and women live together.