QUOTE : The task of couples who wish both to stay married and to maintain some kind of contact with reality must be to learn to accept in the self and permit (and tolerate) in the other an inevitable degree of isolation and 'difference'. There must be, as it were, permissible areas of non-understanding, recognition of untouchable and impenetrable uniqueness, preparedness to enter some experiences entirely alone and unaided by emotional support, not because such support is being wilfully withheld (and might be available in a 'better' relationship) but because its supply is illusory. This calls for a tolerance of pain, and an understanding of its nature, which few of us these days are able to command. Each partner needs to see in the other a man or woman with needs, weaknesses, fears and idiosyncrasies parallel to (though far from identical with) his or her own, not the more or less adequate purveyor, or indeed recipient, of satisfaction – 'love' and 'understanding' – which are the stuff of commodified relationship.