'When we talk about the problem of the art of monstrous men, we are really talking about a larger problem - the problem of human love. The question "what do we do with the art?" is a kind of laboratory or a kind of practice for the real deal, the real question: what is it to love someone awful? The problem is that you still love her. How often this describes our relationships with our families, our spouses, sometimes even our children. It's the problem and it's the solution, this durable nature of love, the way it withstands all the shit we throw at it, the bad behaviour, the disappointments, the antrums, the betrayals.
What do we do about the terrible people in our lives? Mostly we keep loving them.
Families are hard because they are the monsters (and angels, and everything in between) that are foisted upon us. They're unchosen monsters. How random it all seems, when you really consider it. And yet somehow we mostly end up loving our families anyway.
When I was young, I believed in the perfectibility of humans. I believed that the people I loved should be perfect and I should be perfect too. That's not quite how love works.'
Claire Dederer, Monsters, p.256.
