When we confuse assertion with aggression, neutralize otherness, adjust our longings, and reason away our hostility, we assemble a calmness that is reassuring but not very exciting. Stephen Mitchell makes the point that the capacity to contain aggression is a precondition for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggression rather than eradicate it. He explains, “The degradation of romance, the waning of desire, is due not to the contamination of love by aggression, but to the inability to sustain the necessary tension between them.”
