Happier alone

SZ-Magazin: Ms. Kullmann, you once wrote that you prefer to watch the tussles and turmoil in long-term relationships, the fouls and exhaustion, from the sidelines, as a single woman. What do you observe in couples? Katja Kullmann: I notice that in love, there seem to be many pre-established patterns or scripts, role plays, and role assignments. I first noticed them in my own romantic biography, but then they appeared even more strongly from the sidelines. As if everyone were constantly performing the same play, with slight modulations. There's a semi-ironic saying that women sometimes make to each other: "Well, he's just a man." Or: "That's just how men are." Or, conversely, with men, it's: "Typical woman. She just talks so much with her friends." Such sayings are perhaps signs of fatigue. They are patterns that people repeatedly find themselves in in their relationships. And which make them unfree.