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[c6ss6t6]

I remember reading Bukowski refering to relationships/marriage and saying that all relationships burn in flames or settle into numbness. I dont remember the exact phrasing. Anyone know where this is from?

 

[Gerard K H Love]

Welcome to the forum. The experts will be here shortly, while your waiting please enter the New Blood section and tell us a little about yourself. Besides the scary 3 sixes in your name.

 

[roni]

since he fairly often referred to relationships and how they go wrong, i guess, we'd need a little more information.
was it a poem? prose? letter? longer or shorter piece? any more details?

 

[mjp]

"Love is morning fog that lasts a little, then burns off with the first daylight of reality."

He says that in Born Into This, and it's the sentiment you're looking for, and likely as close as you'll get without a little more info.

 

[zobraks]

he fairly often referred to relationships

Yes, indeed.

Here are some of the instances he wrote about relationships/marriages so anyone interested (including @c6ss6t6) can take their pick:

human relationships simply aren’t
durable.

The Drill from Love is a Dog from Hell (and Play the Piano Drunk...)

it was the first time then
that I said it to
her: “human relationships just
never work!”

My Nudie Dancer from The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps

Human relationships do not work.

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (Ecce Hetero: Bukowski’s Thoughts to Live By)

the male-female relationship is almost impossible

a letter to Patricia Connell in Living on Luck

You know how human relationships don’t work.

a letter to Hank Malone in Living on Luck

Human relationships didn’t work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death—in a cesspool. The most one could hope for in a human relationship, I decided, was two and one-half years.

Women

Finally, out of desperation and advancing age, a man is chosen, first, perhaps for sexual pleasure and then later for marriage, a marriage that never works, a marriage that becomes dull and desperate, another durable hell or maybe an unendurable one. Marriage is a contract to live in dullness until death do us part.

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

That’s one reason marriage didn’t work; it became a job instead of a raid into the unknown.

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

But gradually the marriages turned into jobs. They lacked diversity. Soon each marriage turned into a contest, a contest of who could wear down the other. It became a hate game.

Bad Night from Septuagenarian Stew

My personal favo(u)rite is the quote from Women.