One of the most exciting aspects of the early days of a relationship can be the sense that a lover understands us without us needing to speak too much. With other people, we’re always having to explain ourselves at length and even when we do, they frequently struggle to grasp our drift – but a true lover on the other hand seems to get us almost immediately, even in the finer-grained aspects of our personalities. No sooner have we tried to explain, for example, our feelings towards autumn evenings or that bit in a song we like when the violins start to rise that they generously step in to say, ‘I know, I know…’, seemingly ready to confirm our every sensation and idea.

This is a profoundly beautiful and exciting discovery, but it can give rise to hugely troubling dynamics in terms of the long-term success of relationships, for the view that a good lover must intuitively understand us is – over time – one of the most dangerous suppositions responsible for a catastrophic outbreak of sulking. Sulking is a highly distinctive phenomenon within the psychology of love. Crucially, we don’t just sulk with anyone. We reserve our sulks for people we believe should understand us but happen on a given occasion not to. We could explain what is wrong to them of course, but if we did so, it would mean that they had failed to understand us intuitively and therefore, that they were not worthy of love. A sulk is one of the odder gifts of love. To read more from The School of Life, click here.