Not Fooled by Infatuation

Bette and I went to see a one-man show of The Screwtape Letters (TSL) last week. Well…one devil and an imp. It was pretty good, considering that Screwtape himself has the only speaking part and that his correspondent, Wormwood, is only a red flash in a tube, coming down (from Earth) and the reply going back up. It was good to see, though. Screwtape was so polished and urbane, yet he let you see what a voracious chaos lay beneath that surface.


It reminded me of my plan, once I got really retired—that was in 1997—to spend some time on Screwtape and play around a little with ideas that have become more important to me since I first read it, probably at college in the 1950s. I have come to care a lot about causal attribution, for instance. Screwtape cares about it too, but I didn’t have it firmly in mind when I first read it. I’d like to make a project out of this reconsideration of TSL


But not today. Today, I want to think a little about Letter 26, which you can see here. Since most of the people I write to are old, I am often the person in the discussion who has dated most recently and married most recently. So it hasn’t been as long for me as it probably has for you that these ideas really needed to be considered.


I won’t stop here to sketch in much background. Wormwood’s “patient” is a human being who has recently become a Christian. That was bad, from the elder tempter’s (Screwtape’s) point of view and confusing from the younger tempter’s (Wormwood’s) point of view. Worst, the man has just met a Christian girl and all kinds of bad things—deference, charity, patience—are going on between them. But Screwtape is an opportunist and gives Wormwood some instruction on how the present situation might be turned to their advantage. Here is the passage I’ve been thinking about.


Yes; courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years later into domestic hatred. The enchantment of unsatisfied desire produces results which the humans can be made to mistake for the results of charity. Avail yourself of the ambiguity in the word ‘Love’: let them think they have solved by Love problems they have in fact only waived or postponed under the influence of the enchantment. While it lasts you have your chance to foment the problems in secret and render them chronic.

There is between this man and this woman an attraction that Screwtape calls “enchantment.” I would call it infatuation, meaning nothing bad by the word. I’m going to abuse it fearfully in a little while, but I’m fine with it for right now. They call this infatuation “love,” and conclude from their present concord that they have solved problems that they have only postponed. It is this conclusion that reminds me that the English word comes from the Latin fatuus, “foolish.”

It gets worse. Here’s another passage from the same letter.

The erotic enchantment produces a mutual complaisance in which each is really pleased to give in to the wishes of the other. They also know that the Enemy demands of them a degree of charity which, if attained, would result in similar actions. You must make them establish as a Law for their whole married life that degree of mutual self-sacrifice which is at present sprouting naturally out of the enchantment, but which, when the enchantment dies away, they will not have charity enough to enable them to perform.

Screwtape is evil, of course, but he isn’t careless. This couple, being infatuated with each other, treat each other extraordinarily well and are happy together. So far, so good. But two crucial mistakes have already been made. The first is that they have mistaken their infatuation for love, a state which is far into their future and which will be secured only by their mutual intention, discipline, and willingness to laugh at themselves. The second is that they conclude that their present state, in which “each is really pleased to give in to the wishes of the other,” is evidence of their love. And a third mistake is just over their horizon. It is that they expect to be able to continue, when stone cold sober, the quality of relationship only their present intoxication allows.
What to do? What to do?

I have some suggestions. All these are grounded in my own experience and a few of them are treasured memories from those few moments when I actually did what I was trying to do.

First, enjoy infatuation. It is glorious and it is real. It isn’t representative, however. It is not a good clue to how things will be when you have sobered up. It is not, for that reason, a good time to make binding commitments that are based on the notion that these feeling will continue forever. The promises you make feel absolute when you make them, but turn out to have been contingent when you try to keep them. So I think the smart thing to do is to enjoy every moment of the mutual infatuation, but plan for the life you will live together after it has receded.

Second, use the early times to put in place a set of understandings that will serve you in the later times. The state you are in is euphoric and transitory. Promising to feel that way forever is naïve. But using all that good will to lay out realistic common goals and common procedures for handling conflict isn't naive at all; it's nearly sophisticated.

Some things you can do, by using this approach, and some you can’t. You can’t lay out a way to be loving when you are angry at each other; you can lay out a way to limit the damage when you are angry with each other. You can establish routines that require only good will, not positive emotions. You can talk, at least, about what the first steps back toward intimacy will look like. You can do that when your intimacy reigns supreme—it’s a good use of that time—but only when you know it will not always reign supreme.

Third, you can work together to establish a "canary," whose death will alert you to bad things to come. I think of it as a dashboard light that comes on when things are not on course. The light doesn’t come on when things are bad and go off when things are good. Good times and bad times happen in a marriage, which is why they feature those very engaging antitheses in the marriage ceremony. The light comes on when the things that sustain the intimacy are not being done or are not being done with generosity and enthusiasm. When we are not doing, with all our hearts, the things you can do whether you feel cuddly loving or not, the light comes on.

You have to talk about it because the list of “those things you can do” is a different list for Bette and me. And doing those things “with enthusiasm and generosity” looks and feels different for Bette and me. That means when I feel I have been treated thoughtlessly, I have to be willing to say so and Bette has to be willing not to feel as if she has been charged with something. I have to treat my feeling as if it were an indicator that “we are no longer doing what we said we wanted to do.” It really isn’t about me. And Bette has to treat what I say to her not as a complaint, but as a signal that “we are no longer doing what we said we wanted to do.” So it isn’t about her either.

Those things will always be hard to do, but I really believe that the alternative is the gradual taking for granted of the gifts that were once both dazzling and empowering. Learning to do those things will take discipline, good sense, good manners, and a sense of humor. And a long time. But deciding to do those things is best done at the beginning.

Doing this work when we can will mean that our prospects are very good. Screwtape's prospects remain abysmal.