They don’t have the same need for closeness. Having the same need for intimacy or distance is important. He wants to be closer than she does. He believes that the person who wants to be the closest, the most intimate, is the person who loves the most, she disagrees, but she can’t get her point across to him. She is as close to him as it is possible for one person to be to another without morphing, without losing herself, becoming dependent, although dependency is tempting. But she must have space. He strives for symbiosis and she feels its attraction, but soon needs to get back out, to the others. She needs other people. She loves him, but she looks forward to travelling with other people, without him. It is nice to be with other people when she knows she has him, her beloved in her heart, who is waiting, to have him to return to, to be away in the knowledge that he is there, at home, waiting while she is away. She can travel to another continent and feel her love for him, look forward to coming back to him to tell him what she has been doing in his arms. She has to travel, to go away so that she can come home again.

‘I want you with me everywhere,’ he says, ‘on all my trips,’ he says. ‘Everywhere,’ he says reproachfully as if it makes him better than her, his love greater than hers.