What’s going on with male-female relationships?

I’m no longer in the daily column this year so I have more time not to be able to take advantage of having more time. I force myself to twist my nature a bit so I try things, like Yoga or getting unemployment. I do meditation, I visualize things that reassure me… “close your eyes, and imagine Riad Sattouf releasing 3 comics and you who have to write reviews on them…”

I force myself to take some time to observe my surroundings. It takes a lot of walking down the street jogging in the autumn sun. I take coffees, I sit in parks, I open decoration shops. Clearly it looks like someone slowly recovering from a suicide attempt. This week I sat in a square in Paris next to a little old lady who very clearly wanted to talk. Square at off-peak, there were four of us: a rat biting itself, the old lady, me and Vincent Delerm perched in a plane tree writing a song about it all.

We talk about the weather, she tells me that there is no more season, that Paris has become violent, that it was better before… And I don’t contradict her because obviously it was better before, obviously it was better when she was 25 and her legs kept up with the times. Nostalgia isn’t something old, nostalgia is something young people wanted to stay that way. Ah! Damn that was my sheet mixed with Delerm’s. I resume: … she tells me that there’s more season, I tell her to shut her old mouth. Ah, there you go ! That’s me !

In short, we talk and for a moment she says to me “people don’t know how to talk to each other anymore”, and damn I agreed. Because it’s an observation that often comes up in discussions between friends, especially about romantic relationships. Everyone wonders why it’s not smooth, why everything is so complicated, when we must be part of the problem.

I am a heterosexual woman so I will talk about what I know in my case. I don’t know if it’s fear behind all this chaos but it’s freaking me out. Overall, I find people are too hard on each other. And never too hard at the right time… “ohlalala! I don’t know what’s going on, it never happens to me”, it’s happening 57 Gin Tonic Jean-mi, breathe.

There are those who play it on the wind, elusive, always more or less on the start of a Vendée Globe. And you hear “no, but I’m afraid you’re hanging on to me too much”, my friend, unless you’re a parachute instructor and we’re tandem jumping… it’ll be fine.

Those who arrive with their physical requirements of what their girlfriend should look like… “she has to talk, she has to be elegant and manage to follow me…” Ohlalala! but buy yourself an Audi, my friend. Especially since the requirement is one-sided. Dude, you’re hoping for a gorgeous girl – by the standards we know – but you? Well you’re a Twingo my good man. Dude, you have a belly, shape memory! Bro, you lay your head on him, you lose an AirPods…

The rest to listen to and find on video!