How to Cope with an Imperfect Partner

One of the stranger but more powerful discoveries of psychotherapy is that the average baby firmly believes it has two mothers. Mother 1 is kind; she comes when it calls; she gives it milk as soon as it needs it; she’s sweet-natured and generous, wondrous and eminently deserving of love. 

But then there’s another Mother, a far more challenging and terrifying proposition whom we can call Mother 2: and she sometimes doesn’t give baby milk exactly when it wants it; she occasionally fails to interpret its needs; she can misjudge the temperature of the water at bath time; she has friends who come around and distract her and a phone that rings; she gets it wrong.