"I realized something so basic, I mean, so basic -- I don't know you."

You don't know me?

"No."

To sum up the four hours of discussion that followed, it's not easy
being in a relationship, much less to truly know the other one with
all their flaws and baggage.

Jack confessed to me his fear of being rejected. If I truly knew him,
if he showed himself totally bare to me, Jack realized after two years
of being with me that he didn't know me at all, nor did I know him,
and to truly love each other, we needed to know the truth about each
other, even if it's not so easy to take. So I told him the truth,
which is I had never cheated on him, and I also told him that I had
just seen Mathieu that afternoon. He did not get mad at me because
nothing had happened, of course.

I confessed to Jack that the toughest thing for me was to decide to be
with someone for good, the idea that this is it, this is the man I'm
going to spend the rest of my life with. To decide that I will make
the effort to stay and work things out and not run off the minute
there is a problem is very difficult for me.

I told him I could not be with just one man for the rest of my life.
It was a lie, but I said it anyway. He asked me if I thought I was a
squirrel, collecting men like nuts to put away for cold winters. I
thought it was quite funny. Then he said something that hurt my
feelings. The tone changed drastically. Then I misunderstood what he
was saying. I thought he meant he didn't love me anymore, and that he
wanted to break up.

It always fascinates me how people go from loving you madly to nothing
at all, nothing. It hurts so much.

When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break
up first before I get to hear the whole thing.

Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really
love this one. When I think that it's over, that I'll never see him
again like this -- well, yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new
boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then
we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each
other completely. Almost.

Always the same for me. Break up, breakdown. Drink up, fool around.
Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then
after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true
love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness
meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as
well.

There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another
break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time,
well you still can't live without him. And even if he wakes you up
every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes
more than anyone else's kisses.

-- Julie Delpy's monologue in "2 Days in Paris"
(with thanks to S)