“Not all it’s cracked up to be.” There was no mistaking the disillusion in her voice. As she busied herself stirring her coffee, a tear fell from her eye, straight into the cup.

“He doesn’t make me happy,” she revealed despondently, surprising me, who had girlish illusions of marriage as a state of eternal bliss. “What about him ” I inquired. “How does he feel ”

Her reply was a blank look. I probed further: “Is he unhappy, too ” She shrugged. “Haven’t you talked to him about it ” “There’s no point,” she said dismissively. “He’s not what I had hoped for.”

The girl may have been young and spoilt, but I’ve thought of her often in terms of relationships thwarted as a gap opens up between the expectations of one party and the failure to deliver of the other.

Who of the parties is to blame  The one making excessive, unrealistic demands, or the one who won’t ? or can’t ? measure up 

Probably both, for failing to make the necessary compromises to meet halfway.

Waiting on the quay in Roundstone, I spotted an author whom I knew slightly. With me was a friend: an intrepid woman who had spent years of her life paddling a canoe round Papua New Guinea teaching English to the native population.

We chatted with him, until the craft arrived to take us away to an off-shore island. The author stared aghast from us to the rib. “You’re going off ? in that ”

“Why ever not ” we asked, disconcerted. He shook his head incredulously. “I can’t see either of you getting into a boat like that.”

We leapt in like gazelles in front of him, though our morale was at an all-time low. “How did this happen ” we asked ourselves dejectedly. “How did we become so dull, middle-aged and frumpish, that other people can’t imagine us having a bit of fun ”

Months later, when I next met the author, he was still going on about the two of us setting off in the rib. Annoyed, I challenged him: “What was so strange about that ”

He smiled deprecatingly. “It’s just that I have a problem with boats. A kind of phobia. I wouldn’t get into one of those rubber dinghies if my life depended on it.”

And I noted, yet again, how easy it is to view things purely out of your own perspective, overlooking the fact that the other person is doing eactly the same.

No matter how placid and peaceful you are, it will occasionally happen that people you have no reason to dislike turn out to be your enemy. Go out of their way to spite and slander, sabotage your best efforts; injure where it hurts most.

Like any decent person, you will react to such unexplained hostility by searching deep into your memory to find the underlying reason. What could you have done to provoke such antagonism  Stepped on a tender toe  Missed an important message  You’ll be anxious to put things right.

That won’t be easy, however, if the crime of which you’re guilty is, simply, to be yourself: something you’d be at pains to alter.

There are people who will detest you for the way you look, or talk, or smile. Nothing to do with unpleasant characteristics, wrongdoings or shortcomings. Usually it is your very best qualities that are causing the annoyance.

People of the kind who take offence where no offence is meant also tend to cultivate hatred of anyone better adjusted. They’ll never forgive you and they’ll see to it that you’re punished.

When you next have a run-in with one of these, don’t let it upset you. Just run as fast as you can, taking care to remind yourself that you’re not the one with a problem.