Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the

The French thinker Remy de Gourmont once declared: “Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.” In these words is revealed the eternal contrast between the heart of woman and the heart of man, and the different ways they carry the memory of love. For woman holds sacred the beginning, treasuring the spark that first set her soul aflame, while man often forgets even the ending, his passion consumed more by the moment than by the memory.

The ancients, too, spoke of this mystery. They told of queens who cherished tokens of their first embrace long after their kings turned to other battles, of priestesses who guarded the memory of youthful love as though it were divine flame. To woman, the first kiss is not merely flesh meeting flesh, but the seal of destiny, a mark that etches itself into her spirit. To man, often, love is measured in conquest and culmination, and so the memory of the last fades swiftly, like a shadow at dusk.

Yet within this contrast lies not division, but balance. For the woman’s memory preserves the sacredness of love’s origin, giving weight to the tender and the small; while the man’s forgetfulness reveals the fleeting fire of passion, living always in the present rather than the past. The union of these two ways of being creates the full tapestry of love: one thread eternal, one thread ephemeral.

The wisdom here is not to diminish one or the other, but to recognize the divine differences. Women embody continuity, the keeper of beginnings, the guardian of sentiment that gives love its roots. Men, often restless, embody transience, the wanderers of feeling, yet they bring the urgency that gives love its fire. Together, these truths form the circle of passion—memory and immediacy, root and flame.

Let this teaching endure: love is not remembered the same by all, yet both memory and forgetting are sacred. The first kiss lives eternal in the heart of woman as the dawn of love’s journey, while man’s fading recollection of the last kiss teaches that love must be lived fiercely while it burns. To honor both is to honor the mystery of love itself, which is both eternal and fleeting, both sacred and passing, like the very breath of life.