My Husband

by Maud Ventura

But it comes back to my love of beginnings. I’ve always preferred the first chapters of a book, the first fifteen minutes of a film, the first act of a play. I like starting points. When everyone is in their rightful place in a world that makes sense.

“I’ve never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

We think it’s our fault if the other person leaves us, that we could have done something to stop it. We imagine that we could have acted in such a way as to preserve their desire to be together. The idea behind “let you go” is pleasant; there’s even something reassuring about it.

And what more beautiful gift is there than a hiding place?

love has never been a question of uncertainty or waiting, that regularity and reciprocity do not alter intensity.

passion can also grow from domestic stability, from consistently punctual returns home, from the proof of commitment, from the repetition of daily life.

I do my best, but most of the time I’m too busy being in love to be a good mother.

Passion was snuffed out to make room for the quotidian.

I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much so that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and saddened. When I love, I become harsh, serious, intolerant. A heavy shadow settles over my relationships. I love and want to be loved with so much gravitas that it quickly becomes exhausting (for me, for the other person). It’s always an unhappy kind of love.

My inexhaustible need for love has elicited opposite reactions in each of them. For some, it was perceived as an excessive but reassuring proof of attachment. For others, it was a frightening and guilt-ridden responsibility.

we could identify our last times as easily as our first times, thousands of moments would be lived more intensely.