My Husband

by Maud Ventura

But even when he’s deep inside me, my husband is out of my reach. Even now, I still miss him so much. When he leaves my body, he leaves a gaping wound, a horrible void, a gash waiting to be infected.

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.

Today I’ve learned to hide it, to pretend, but deep down there is still only one thing capable of getting me out of bed at any hour of the day or night: love.

“Love brings you sadness, just like your mother,” she murmured to me, taking me in her arms with all the tenderness in the world.

Married just a few hours, my love for my husband was already painful, and I was learning, like Phaedra, that this pain might be hereditary.

I was so desperate for a new perspective that I asked them for their opinion on the conversation. One of the students raised their hand and said, “The husband doesn’t love the wife.” A stab to the heart. I had to sit down for a second to catch my breath.

When my husband doesn’t take my hand, when he turns me into a clementine, when he doesn’t ask me about my day, when he closes the shutters and draws the curtains before going to bed, when he interrupts me, when he forgets the name of a coworker I tell him about often, when he doesn’t seem particularly eager to see me again, when he lets go of my hand in the street, when he doesn’t answer one of my calls, when I catch him with his eyes open during a kiss: those moments set my marriage to a sad soundtrack.

After how many times seeing the same person naked do we stop being excited by it? When does the magic wear off?

“I’m convinced of one thing. My sister is so obsessed with love because it helps her avoid thinking about real problems. Love is a distraction!

It’s easier to cry over a man than to think about the cancer she’s been battling for ten years, or the fact that she won’t ever be able to have a child.”

He seems to have been in the loop. I feel as though I’ve been gone for two years on vacation without them, or like I just woke up from a long coma. My own family eludes me.

When I come out of the kitchen, I find my husband deep in conversation with Lucie. Shamelessly, he’s devouring her with his eyes with as much fervor as though she were revealing the secrets of the universe

They might as well be making love in the middle of the garden. I don’t move. Lucie’s two red cheeks give her away, it’s written all over her face: my husband is flirting with her.

What a foolish risk. Cheating on my husband around so many witnesses. And cheating on my husband on a Saturday, when I only do it on Thursdays. There are rules, they must be heeded, they’re there to protect me.

and on top of that I just orgasmed (which makes my cheeks flush) and I can feel her husband’s semen running down my legs. I wonder if anyone can see it.

the gentle mom mask is gone. I grab her wrist and squeeze it tight to paralyze her little arm in my hand. And with bloodcurdling coldness, I hiss an order: “Go to sleep now.”

The decision is mine: Does my husband deserve to live? I have no difficulty picturing him unconscious on the ground, his skull fractured, blood flooding his brain.

Perhaps it’s a disproportionate vengeance for being forced to sleep with the shutters closed. Instead, furious red tears spring from my eyes like two erupting volcanoes. Why can’t he grant me a single concession?

And then my husband whispers those fateful words in my ear. “We need to find a moment to talk. It’s important.”

It’s a good thing. I have nothing left to fear, because what was bound to happen has happened. I have nothing left to fear, because the worst has happened.

marriage guarantees nothing, except that he won’t tell you he’s cheated with a coworker because he’ll have too much to lose.

Having children with the man you love is even worse: now he’s forced to be with you for years even once desire has fizzled out.

There is no couple where love is shared equally; it’s not possible. So we have to determine which kind of romantic life we’d like to lead: Will we be the one who receives or the one who gives?

If I had chosen to be loved rather than to love, I would certainly have been a better mother. And I would have had the necessary headspace to form real friendships and focus on my career.

I started moving my husband’s things because I missed him. I continued because he needed to be punished and because he deserved it.

My heart is so full of my love for my husband. Will it stop beating if it loses its object? Will it still function with no driving force, no purpose?

turning forty this year, the children have grown up . . . They’ve grown up so fast. So I said to myself, it’s now or never. What would you say to growing our family? A third child, what do you think?”