A French Model's Take On Love

Ines's marriage survived a great source of stress for many couples: fertility problems. "I had terrible trouble conceiving, and this is often very dangerous for a couple because it's almost unavoidable that the woman becomes obsessive, because fertility treatments are so all-consuming." Whenever possible, she dealt with the treatments on her own.

"For Luigi, all the medical procedures were a huge deal. I never asked him to come to the hospital with me. I often saw couples there waiting for hours on end because they were doing things together, and I couldn't help thinking that they were taking a tremendous risk. "She and d'Urso met when she was 18; she attended his first wedding, and ended up marrying him in 1990, years after he had divorced. In between, she had "many different love stories."

It is only after you've lived through different stages in your life and loves that you can have a real notion of what a couple is, Ines believes now, at age 47. "If I had stayed with the guitar player who was in my life when I was 15, we wouldn't have a lot to say to each other today. There's a sort of evolution in one's love life. The proof is that when I met Luigi at 18, I couldn't imagine for one second falling in love with him. At the time, I wanted a guy to be brilliant, funnier than the others, and to talk more loudly than anyone else. And what I found seductive in Luigi when I was 30—he talked to me about India and the Indians' vision of the world and how they weren't individualistic—wasn't at all what would have interested me at 18."

"I think people get married too quickly and divorce too quickly," she says. "I've often noticed that women blame their husbands for the very things that attracted them in the first place. They'll say, ‘He's too poetic, too intellectual, incapable of facing his past, which he's dragging behind him.' Lots of women are waiting for a Prince Charming, and that's a mistake. I don't think all the clichés like meeting your lover on the platform of a train station, and so on, have much to do with the couple on a day-to-day basis. I think one has the right to hate one's husband on Friday and adore him on Saturday. It's this paradoxical side to life that we just haven't learned—there are ups and downs."

Olivia Snaije is a reporter for the Daily Star of Lebanon. She lives in Paris.