de Botton kind of alludes to this here but in a wordy and deeply pessimistic way, but I don't think that's a good framing for it.
> It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage
> Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.
I disagree, contrary to what he says a Romantic (in the literary sense) view always allows us to be flawed, because it always contains room for redemption. Thinking that marriage will be some kind of perfect union is rationalist thinking, like designing a system of gears. Thinking of marriage as union of two people who work together for something greater that both can share the fruits of is irrational thinking we need and can easily intuit. We're just really good at shunning this kind of thinking, these days.
In the end we both agree, he says: "Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition." I just think his framing here is needlessly pessimistic and dismissive of the romantic forces, and probably a terrible way to approach most of life's difficulties, never-mind marriage.