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access to Feminist Writings
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what love is—and isn’t
by Simone de Beauvoir
note by marybeth timmermann
Why do you fall in love? Nothing is more simple. You fall in love because
you are young, because you are growing old, because you are old; because
spring is fading, because autumn is beginning; from excess energy, from
fatigue; from gaiety, from boredom; because someone loves you, because he
does not love you. . . . I find too many answers: perhaps the question is not
so simple, after all.
The experience of love is so universal that it seems to have no mystery.
Everywhere, at every hour, even at this very moment, thousands of men and
women are saying to each other with astonishment or awe, “I love you. I am
in love.” They are saying it loudly or softly, with these words or others, but
they are saying it—for otherwise it would not be love. “I need you. I will suf-
fer without you. I can no longer live without you.” Time and space hang in
the balance, immobilized before a face that holds the essence of everything
that is precious in this world.
Since we no longer believe in the myth of predestined lovers, how can
we explain these exclusive choices? To the lovers, they are self-evident. Yet
friends ask one another, “What does he find in her? What does she see in
him?”
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feminist writings
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short feminist te xts from the fifties and sixties
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feminist writings
a need for security, a taste for danger; from despair, from hope; because
someone does not love you, because he does love you. . . .
Not es
“What Love Is—and Isn’t,” McCall’s, August 1965, 71, 133; translator unknown; © Sylvie Le
Bon de Beauvoir. The article was preceded by “A Celebrated Frenchwoman explains . . .”
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