Xanthippe

There is a wonderful passage in Xenophon's Symposium, where someone challenges Socrates to ask him why he ever married Xanthippe. If you're not familiar with the background, Xanthippe has gone down in history as the world's most famous shrew, a nagging harridan second to none. And Socrates, the prototype of all philosophers, was her husband.

You could make a joke here about philosophers being unworldly and ineffectual, but that's not what Xenophon does. Rather, he has someone challenge Socrates: You claim to be able to teach people to be better through philosophy—you claim that philosophy is practical in this way—so what's about your wife? Why is she so awful, if you are allegedly so wise?

And Socrates has an answer. Here is the passage:

“If that is your view, Socrates,” asked Antisthenes, “how does it come that you don't practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?”

“Because,” he replied, “I observe that men who wish to become expert horsemen do not get the most docile horses but rather those that are high-mettled, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.”

These words, in the judgment of the guests, did not go wide of the mark. 

I wish I could pretend that my own motives in marrying Wife were so far-sighted and so lofty. They weren't. But in retrospect I find it reassuring that even Socrates (maybe I should say especially Socrates!) had his own domestic troubles. I surely knew she would be very difficult. I knew I was signing myself up for something that would be life-changing. I didn't know more than that. 

But ... you know ... these things work out.