Our engagement was assuming the aspect of a criminal trial, and gave her the timorousness of a guilty party. Now she changed the conversation whenever it turned on people, men or women, who were not of mature years. It was when she had not yet suspected that I was jealous of her that I should have asked her to tell me what I wanted to know. One ought always to take advantage of that period. It is then that one's mistress tells one about her pleasures and even the means by which she conceals them from other people. She would no longer have admitted to me now as she had admitted at Balbec, partly because it was true, partly by way of apology for not making her affection for me more evident, for I had already begun to weary her even then, and she had gathered from my kindness to her that she need not show as much affection to me as to others in order to obtain more from me than from them - she would no longer have admitted to me now as she had admitted then: "I think it stupid to let people see who one loves. I'm just the opposite: as soon as a person attracts me, I pretend not to take to take any notice. In that way, nobody knows anything about it."
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 51-52
In this passage Proust is reflecting on how miserable he's making Albertine, and one can only recognize, once again, how apt it is that this volume is entitled The Captive. What gets me is the deliberate, sustained, almost systemic jealousy-based cruelty of their relationship (if would be as if Kafka wrote Relationships for Dummies and Emotional Sadists). To be fair, it's not as if Albertine is completely innocent in their twisted relationships, both in her actions but also, as we've discussed and will again shortly, her comments (essentially, she says things to wind Marcel up that I can't believe are merely accidental). It's just amazing the amount of time and effort we devote to making each other miserable. Theoretically, relationships shouldn't be that difficult: some fairly consistent affection, both physical and emotional; a modicum of attention, often always at the level of "How was your day?" or "And what are you reading?", it doesn't always have to be at the level of "No, seriously, why was she your best childhood friend?" or "Let's talk about your view of God in more depth, and could you include citations."; the occasional mind-altering orgasm, with the partner's appropriate hard work and theatrics, counter-balanced with the more routine, dependable, serviceable orgasms, etc. Instead, we treat most relationships like small boys pulling wings off flies.
But the other side of this is that Marcel does love Albertine, and he does have some sense of the life they could have if they would just get out of each other's way emotionally. Check out this passage from two inches further down the page:
As I listened to Albertine's footsteps with the consoling pleasure of thinking that she would not be going out again that evening, I marvelled at the thought that, for this girl whom at one time I had supposed that I could never possibly succeed in knowing, returning home every day actually meant returning to my home. The fugitive and fragmentary pleasure compounded of mystery and sensuality, which I had felt at Balbec, on the night when she had come to sleep at the hotel had been completed and stabilised, filling my hitherto empty dwelling with a permanent store of domestic, almost conjugal bliss that radiated even into the passages and upon which all my senses, either actively or, when I was alone, in imagination as I awaited her return, peacefully fed. (52-53)
Again, it's no literary accident that this volume and the next are entitled The Captive and The Fugitive, respectively.
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