"When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need"
About this Quote
Romance doesn’t just blur the facts; it edits them to fit the viewer. Ellen Goodman’s line lands with the casual authority of a newsroom veteran who’s watched people turn private longing into public narrative. The move is deceptively simple: she shifts “describe” from a neutral act to a revealing one. Descriptions feel like reports, but Goodman insists they’re projections - a diagnostic tool for desire.
“I suppose” is doing sly work. It softens the claim, inviting the reader to nod along, but it also implies she’s seen this pattern enough times to know it’s basically law. Then comes the core metaphor: the “prism.” A prism doesn’t merely distort; it refracts, splitting one beam into many colors. Need doesn’t erase reality so much as reorganize it, making some traits glow and others disappear. The subtext is uncomfortable: the beloved isn’t always the main subject of our sentences. We are.
As a journalist writing in an era when self-help language, therapy talk, and second-wave feminism reshaped how Americans discussed intimacy, Goodman is alert to the politics of perception. “What the other person is really like” sounds like a truth claim, the kind people use to justify staying, leaving, excusing, blaming. She punctures that certainty. The intent isn’t to sneer at love but to warn against its most flattering illusion: that our feelings are evidence. Need is not an insight; it’s a lens, and lenses come with fingerprints.
“I suppose” is doing sly work. It softens the claim, inviting the reader to nod along, but it also implies she’s seen this pattern enough times to know it’s basically law. Then comes the core metaphor: the “prism.” A prism doesn’t merely distort; it refracts, splitting one beam into many colors. Need doesn’t erase reality so much as reorganize it, making some traits glow and others disappear. The subtext is uncomfortable: the beloved isn’t always the main subject of our sentences. We are.
As a journalist writing in an era when self-help language, therapy talk, and second-wave feminism reshaped how Americans discussed intimacy, Goodman is alert to the politics of perception. “What the other person is really like” sounds like a truth claim, the kind people use to justify staying, leaving, excusing, blaming. She punctures that certainty. The intent isn’t to sneer at love but to warn against its most flattering illusion: that our feelings are evidence. Need is not an insight; it’s a lens, and lenses come with fingerprints.
Quote Details
| Topic | Relationship |
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