Nick Cave on Love / The Red Hand Files ISSUE #374 (AUGUST 2026)

How do I make my partner not the centre of my world? I love him so much now I depend on his presence because everything is just better by his side.
AGUSTINA, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA



Dear Agustina,

I have chosen this question not because I have something particularly helpful to say, but because it marks a milestone - the 150,000th letter to The Red Hand Files, all of which, dear people, I have read. I take some pride in being able to say this, and I am grateful for your continued involvement. It is a strange, lovely thing we are doing together, wringing out our hearts.

I am not the one to advise on how to keep love at a sensible distance, Agustina. Against the advice of an army of therapists, analysts, 12-step sponsors, life-coaches, hypnotists and TED Talkers, my wife and I remain committed to full-on emotional enmeshment, a massive dose of co-dependency, some good old maladaptive caretaking, and a fair amount of enslavement. I am a happy planet helplessly orbiting my wife, the sun; I am her vassal, her monkey on a chain, in her thrall, drunk on her, lost to her. I suspect if you asked her, she’d say she’s the planet, and I’m the sun, but that would be her being modest. Whatever the case, we are better together and a mess apart, fully entangled, all in, happily doomed. By the way, there was an eclipse last night, marking, amongst other things, twenty-seven years of our marriage. How thoughtful of the cosmos to have remembered.

I loved your letter, Agustina, the 150,000th, and I think your partner is fortunate to have someone who seems willing to submit to love’s snares and entanglements. To me, the measure of a relationship is not in the distance maintained between the two of you, but whether you want the best for your partner, and your partner wants the best for you. If you have that and can maintain it, you are pretty much there and can let love have its way.

Love, Nick