The End of the Affair

by Graham Greene

I would reconstruct what we had said to each other: I would fan myself into anger or remorse.

relatable

in the act of love I could be arrogant, but alone I had only to look in the mirror to see doubt,

insecure

We most of us hesitate to make so complete a statement—we remember and we foresee and we doubt. She had no doubts. The moment only mattered. Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.

I refused to believe that love could take any other form than mine: I measured love by the extent of my jealousy, and by that standard of course she could not love me at all.

unfortunately relatable

If I can get her out of my system, can’t I find somewhere a quiet friendly marriage that would go on and on? Then perhaps I wouldn’t feel jealous because I wouldn’t love enough: I would just be secure, and my self-pity and hatred walked hand in hand across the darkening Common