Others, though, would zoom in on that first night in the closet-sized Parisian hotel room with the slanted stairs and slanted floors, the room spinning from what I would in retrospect properly label as vertigo, my mind flooding with the dreadful realization that every corner of Paris does not smell like the pages of glossy lady magazines. The romance, they would argue, sprang to life the moment I became aware that when you walk the streets of Paris for the very first time, you do not always feel like a great glowing god, optimistic and invincible.

In fact, it is possible to feel queasy and ugly and stupid on the streets of Paris. It is possible to find the corner cafe too crowded and smoky, to encounter the tiny brasseries and flower stands as cartoonish imitations of a France that might’ve vanished decades ago. It is possible to find the French themselves a teensy bit too French. Not only that, but it is possible to reach into one’s brain for a single sentence from six years of French in junior high and high school and college, and discover an utter void. And after fumbling for words and mumbling something in English like a common tourist who has never been to Paris even once, after the waiter rolls his eyes and theatrically turns on his heel, revealing himself to be a bad imitation of a breed of French waiter that might’ve died off around the time Hemingway last set foot on the continent, after looking down at an idiotic crepe — we might as well be at Universal Studios Hollywood! — after all of that, I looked to my perfect, handsome, smart, amazing future husband for comfort and reassurance, and saw that he was a little bit … moist. He was looking back with worried eyes, wondering if, like Paris itself, he was a big letdown. And in that exceptionally frightening and thus deeply romantic moment, it was suddenly possible to find this handsome, smart, amazing future husband … disappointing.

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What’s more disappointing? The fact that he actually cares what you’re feeling, which for some crazy reason makes you angry and self-conscious, or the fact that he doesn’t bluster his way through his nonexistent French so much as cringe and cower visibly? This is what all of your former selves are debating in delighted tones as you take the fast train from Paris to Biarritz, your head spinning and your bee sting, now the size of a plum, throbbing. This is not how your arrogant father behaved when he was traveling, your former selves remind you. Your dad dove in and blustered his way through it all, and you felt safe and secure (if sometimes slightly embarrassed). Your future husband has no bluster. His fears amplify your fears.

“But what do you want?” Your former selves hiss in your ear as the landscape whizzes by and your future husband smiles nervously in your direction. “Do you seriously want a daddy? You’re so pathetic that you can’t travel to Europe for the first time without wanting your future husband to imitate your actual dead father?”

This moment, as the train pulls into Biarritz and your self-hatred starts to upstage your hatred of your amazing future husband, might just be the starting point of the real, true romance. The rain lets up enough for the two of you to find a table by the ocean, and as you sit there, you notice that you are surrounded by a wide range of bored international types with money, families with adult children, all of them with the same triple-processed hair carrying the same Gucci and Hermès bags, all of them trussed up in tight jeans and blousy blouses. You might as well be at The Grove in Los Angeles. You might as well be in Miami or New Jersey or Pleasanton, Calif.