Existential Lessons on Love

1. Why do we even need a lover?

Sartre sketched a chimerical being with two sets of eyes and two pairs of arms and hands. ‘Each of us can point out to the other what he or she sees. Otherwise we allow a whole host of unperceived things to pass us by.’ Where you go, ‘I have the impression that I have eyes there too.’

2. Why I don’t love you just for your body‘

God knows how much I love your body. But what is priceless for me is the human individual and it is your individuality I love. If I had to choose between your body and your friendship, I would prefer your friendship’.

3.Why you never have to feel alone‘

Gestalt theory explains how it is that one sees complicated patterns in the carpet interweaving despite the interruption of a chair leg. So it is with us: we continue underneath this absence…I remember everything about you: you are always close to me, I taste you in my mouth, I smell you in my nostrils, I hear the sound of your voice in my ears, you never leave me, I carry you around with me everywhere. And you are also the sense of time that flows and leads me back towards you.’

4. Why French women suffer from bad faith‘

Women are as free-willed in France as in America, but the rules of engagement require that they have to be seduced and find themselves in bed giving the impression that they have been carried away by an emotion stronger than they are.’

5. And what happened last night anyway?‘

It was only a dream, scarcely even a promise, virtually a denial.’ Swing missed Sartre when he was away, often with other women. ‘I would like to iron you out flat, fold you up and mail you back to Simone de Beauvoir’s grave,’ she wrote. But Sartre, the man of letters, suffered from a sense of the unreality of the flesh. He only fully loved her when they were apart. We’ll always have Paris.