The Real Thing

Two Days in Paris reminded me of Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing. The protagonist, Henry, a playwright, is married to an actress. He falls in love with another actress and as he leaves his marriage, he wonders if this new love is the real thing.
There's a passage in the play where he talks about the fact that insecurity in love stems from the suspicion that somebody else has the same kind of access to or knowledge of the loved one as we do.

"It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh, but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy...we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs, we insist that we give ourselves each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? A sort of knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared -- she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone, everything is pain."