'...to be married is to volunteer for the most thorough surveillance program known to humankind. The person who is married is watched, more or less all the time. Worse, the awareness that you are being watched compels you to watch yourself. This new self-consciousness introduces you to yourself, to all the stupid things you do, from leaving the cupboards open, to the way you are silent and grumpy in the morning, to the way you avoid any difficult conversation or play passive aggressive when you are feeling hurt, as if life were some elaborate game of victimhood in which if you make your spouse feel guilty for hurting you you will get a slice of cherry cake at the end.'
David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.145.
