My Husband

by Maud Ventura

How could I become familiar to him so quickly? After the first months of enchantment, I observed, powerless, the merging of our lives, which only wound up distancing us even more. The emotionally loaded looks and the awkward gestures were replaced by a gentle complicity. 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.