My Husband

by Maud Ventura

For years my husband has called me “sweetheart” while I yearn to be a femme fatale.

No one can see my neuroses except me. The way I see myself is not how other people see me. Everything is okay. I belong here.

More generally, the idea that my husband existed before meeting me is surreal, even revolting.

Each new person who enters into our life is an additional dilution of his attention, a dilution of him, and I’m horrified by this. The energy he expends toward others hurts me: it tells me that I am not enough for him.

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

“If we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.”

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.

It’s easy to identify a first time, but we rarely know when something is happening for the last time.

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