idea that we might telepathically know what number  between one and a million a stranger is thinking  

of or that we could place our hands on someone  else’s skull and thereby intuit the precise  

details of what they dreamt of last night. But in  relationships, whatever our professed scepticism,  

we very frequently proceed as if mind reading were  not only possible but a standard requirement and  

possibility in love, something of whose absence we  would have every right to complain with bitterness  

and surprise. In a great many ways, we simply  assume that our partner must automatically be able  

to know the movements and preoccupations of our  minds. And our expectations shows up in one of the  

standard ways in which we speak of the perfection  of a lover in the initial days of rapture:  

they seem to know what we are  thinking, without us needing to speak…

But our superstitious commitment to  mind-reading soon evolves into something  

darker as relationships proceed, for example when: - we get huffy that our partner didn’t realise  

that our off-colour comment was only a joke - we can’t imagine they could even think we’d  

like the bizarre birthday present they bought us - we’re offended that they like a  

book we’ve already decided is silly - we’re annoyed that they didn’t know we  

wouldn’t want to go to the mountains this summer - they can’t understood the mood we are in  

when we get back from having lunch with our mother

We get worked up because we can’t conceive  that certain ideas and feelings that are  

so vivid in our minds should not immediately be  obvious to someone who professes to care for us.  

We quickly fall into believing that the partner’s  incomprehension can only be explained in one way:  

it must come down to wilfulness or nastiness. And  therefore, it seems only fair that we respond with  

one of our standard forms of punishment due  to all those who should have known better:  

a sulk - that paradoxical pattern of behaviour  in which we refuse, for several hours or even  

a day or two, to reveal what is wrong to our  confused partner because they should just know.

The origins of our reckless hopes are, in a sense,  extremely touching. When we were little a parent  

really did, at key moments, seem to know what we  were thinking without us needing to speak. As if  

by magic, they guessed that we might want some  milk. With a medium’s genius, they determined  

that we needed a bath or a nap or that a blanket  was a bit scratchy for our cheek. And from this,  

an equation formed in our minds: whenever I  am properly loved, I do not need to explain.

But however great our parents were at reading  our minds, they had a huge advantage over our  

partners: we were - back then - really very  simple. Our requirements were usefully few:  

we needed only to be fed, bathed, slept,  taken to the potty and entertained with  

a picture book or bit of string. But  we had no advanced views on politics,  

we had no complicated opinions on interior  design, our psyches didn’t register feint  

tremors of sarcasm or hypocrisy, we couldn’t be  thrown off course by the pronunciation of a word.

How much more complicated we have grown  since then. We are now adults who can  

feel very strongly that a table must be placed  symmetrically in a room twenty centimetres from  

the door to the kitchen; or we like it very  much when or partner rolls up their sleeves  

but we hate them wearing a short-sleeved shirt,  especially the green one; we like being teased  

(but only sometimes and never about our age); we  are very critical of our mother but can’t allow  

anyone to mention her habit of being late; we come  across as confident but think of ourselves as shy;  

we like art but have an aversion to museums;  we love stone fruits but hate peaches;  

we talk a lot about politics but can’t stand  reading newspapers. Our partner’s inability  

to know all this - fast and decisively -  necessarily feels like an intimate insult  

and the complex task of explaining our thoughts  and attitudes like an unreasonable imposition.

But once we accept that there is no such thing as  mindreading, a central part of our relationship  

becomes the slow, careful process of piecing  together - in one another’s company - what  

matters to us and why, with all the surprise and  moments of genuine revelation this entails. We  

accept that there will be an immense amount  we need to teach each other about who we are  

pretty much every day - while trusting that  this is not an attack on the idea of love.