A couple of people recently asked me the same question, so I thought I would bring it up here on the blog. The question:
Does Vincent love Kate more than Hélène?
My response: WOW! Good question!!!
And my answer would have to be: I believe you can have more than one love in your life. But no two loves are the same.
When Vincent loved Hélène he was very young, inexperienced and hadn’t seen much of life. He had only met a few other women in his small Brittany town. It was an innocent but true love with a childhood friend.
By the time he finds Kate, he’s had decades of experience. He’s known some joy and a lot of tragedy. He’s met thousands of people. And yet, Kate is the only one he falls in love with. And it’s an all-consuming desperate love because he now knows how rare it is.
So I would have to say: Kate and Hélène are two different loves for Vincent, but neither takes anything away from the other.
Now…tell me what you think. Is it possible to have more than one true love in a lifetime?
23 Comments to The Love of Your Life
by Daisy - On August 4, 2011
Yes! Why not? Like you said, they would be different loves, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love twice or more times. I can’t believe someone who lost their first love at a young age is destined to be alone forever (or at least without love forever).
by Rebecca - On August 4, 2011
I think vincent loves kate because as you sed, he’s more grown up now and has had years to understand love.With Helena he did love her but they were very young and seeing her die brought more love for her to vincent. He does loves kate though but comparing them if i had to say only one of them… i think Kate but vincent will always have a place in his heart for Helena.
by Melinda - On August 4, 2011
Absolutely!!
As you’ve stated, having more than one true love in your lifetime is possible because they are different loves altogether. Vincent lost a love at a very young age, so I honestly couldn’t believe that he couldn’t have another true love at another point in his life…especially given his life is extremely long 🙂
You can’t even compare or contrast the loves of your life either. And nothing can ever replace that first love’s place in your heart.
by gidgetnfroggi - On August 4, 2011
they are 2 different loves at different times and places in his life. He will always love Helena since she was his first love and lost her in such a tragic way. So there was never a real ending and closure to that love.
He loves Kate because she has giving him hope and meaning and reasons to feel again and be alive (ok he isn’t really alive in the true word but you know what I mean). She is his here and now and maybe even a old soul that was meant to find him and be with him.
Now my question is will this constant flirting Jules is doing with Kate come between him and his friend Vincent??? 🙂
by Mari - Escape In A Book - On August 4, 2011
I’m also sure that one can love more than one person through a lifetime(both in real life and in books ;)). Unfortunately quite a few people lose their life way too early and it would be sad if the other part was expected to live the rest of his/hers life alone.
One can love again even if one never forgets the person who has passed away.
by StuckInBooks - On August 4, 2011
I think so especially when they happen at different times in your life. The bigger question is can you be in love with two different people at the same time?
valerie
StuckInBooks.com
by Lucero - On August 4, 2011
Not for me, I have loved a couple of times, but NEVER as my first one and true love, I lost him and never, ever loved the same way…
by Rose - On August 4, 2011
thers a difference between the loves u have in life and your soul mate.your soul mate will always be only one person.helene was incents first love, she will never be forgotten, but i dont think they were soul mates.Kate is his soul mate, his other half, the person who undertsands him completely.
Do you understand what im saying?
by amy - On August 4, 2011
I love all of your responses. It sounds like some of you are speaking from *cough* personal *cough* experience. Sometimes we don’t know what a love was until it is gone and we experience another. I thought one person was my soul mate – I truly believed it for several years. And luckily (in retrospect) I was wrong.
by samantha broten - On August 4, 2011
i think there can be two different loves in different lifetimes but not in the same one. i say this because if your heart belongs to one person why should it belong to another person at the same time?
by Dani - On August 4, 2011
I agree and I think you explained it perfectly. But I also agree with Rose…I think you can love someone who’s not your soul mate. Soul mates may be rarer than true loves, and I think Kate and Vincent are both.
GAH. I CANNOT WAIT for the next book!
by Rose - On August 4, 2011
what im pretty much saying is that you can love more than one person.but only one will be the person, the soul, that is your match.
vincent’s match is kate.not helene.though helene was certainly an important love, i dont believe she could ever be as in sync with vincent as vincent and kate are.
by Kelly - On August 4, 2011
I agree totally! As you grow as a person your wants, needs and desires change. The person that was right for you at 18 isn’t necessarily the person that’s right for you at, say, 30. I also agree with Rose, that you can love more than once but only have one soulmate. There’s hope for all of us, when one love ends it’s not the end of the world, only the end of the moment.
by Angela Brown - On August 4, 2011
There are some instances where a person meets their true love and should they lose them, it’s over and done. But I believe that just as we have second chances in life, we have second chances at true love.
by Rose - On August 4, 2011
Sorry Angela im confused, are u saying you can have more than one soul mate or more than one love?
by Lily - On August 5, 2011
I lost the one I love a few years ago, if you can love another I have not found anyone.
What I do think is that for some people they might be able to love again, but for others there is just one.
by amy - On August 5, 2011
I loved your responses and discussion so much, that as a special gift I thought I’d give you this teaser from UNTIL I DIE – on this very subject. This is Vincent talking to Kate, from Chapter 7.
“Kate, I’ve spent a lifetime waiting for you. Before I saw you, I hadn’t cared for anyone for . . . well, for the good part of a century, and it felt like my heart had been permanently disconnected. I wasn’t even looking anymore. And without expecting anything . . . without any hope at all, suddenly there you were.”
by Mari - Escape In A Book - On August 5, 2011
Aww Vincent is such a sweet guy(but Jules is my latest literary crush :)).
by Louisse - On August 5, 2011
Actually, my friends and I just discussed this! 😀 We think that we CAN have more than one “true loves” because a person can’t just sit around moping about a loss. They have to move on to find someone better! It’s really a person’s choice on whether or not they want to fall in love again. So it IS possible to have more than one true loves. Because every time a person falls in love, it is always so pure and always expressed whole heartedly and that is what true love really is. How a person expresses it and how much they’re willing to be with that person. 🙂
by Rose - On August 5, 2011
That passage is so cute!
by Andra - On August 17, 2011
I think you can have more than just one love in your life, depending on what kind of love it is. If it’s a childish love, where you loved the person because you’ve known them for a while, that’s probably what Helene and Vincent’s relationship was. it seemed like he wanted to marry her sooner better than later, because they could have gotten killed.
On the other hand, you have the passionate kind of love, the kind where every moment is a thrilling experience because you truly love and understand the other person. That’s like Kate and Vincent’s relationship. You can clearly tell that he’s in love with her, especially in the fight. Lucien threatens to kill her, and Vincent goes into protective mode. That’s the kind of love almost everyone wants. (except for the part with slaying evil zombies if they threaten your girlfriend, or..yeah. :D)
And then, there is the love that isn’t really love. The kind that people call ‘love’ because they don’t have a name for it. it’s more of an inexperienced crush, like what you feel when you see that cute guy in school, or your favorite actor or actress. That’s not even love; it’s just a crush. We’ve all been there.
I personally think Vincent loves Kate much more than Helene, but he still has feelings for Helene because of the past they had together. But like Vincent said, ‘That was another lifetime ago.’ After Helene died, Vincent was like Kate when her parents died; and emotional zombie. But it was quite literal for him. And it seems like Kate is a bit intimidated by Vincent’s past love, and thinks that he might not love her in the same way he loved Helene.
From what I’ve seen, Kate loves Vincent, but she can’t call it love. She feels like it’s too soon to be calling it love, even thought it is. She realizes she loves him on her birthday in the boat.
God, I wrote a novella just describing my thoughts on Vincent-Kate-Helene. 😀
by Amy Plum - On August 25, 2011
Andra, your thoughts on Vincent and Kate and Helene are the same as mine. You read the relationships exactly the way I hoped my readers would. 🙂 (hurray!)
by Andra - On August 31, 2011
Yay!
The whole thing that I wrote took me like, five or six minutes? 😀
Maybe because I was just waiting for a blog entry like this, so I could write down my thoughts on the subject