On the cover of Vanity Fair: Fabio Volo talks about his separation for the first time

THEn an exclusive interview with Vanity FairFabio Volo recounts for the first time his separation from Johanna Maggy, with whom he had his sons Sebastian, 9, and Gabriel, 7. Waiting to see it at the cinema in early 2023 with Vittoria Puccini in the film A great will to live, taken from his penultimate book – he has 11 novels translated into 22 languages ​​and 8 million copies sold in ten years – Fabio today is above all a single father, who has discovered “superpowers”. “I’m better off as dad, which I didn’t know before we split. I’m better. Because there’s only me », he says. «It is true that quantity has decreased but quality has increased».

In the issue on newsstands from November 30, Fabio Volo talks about the maturity he has reached, also the result of meditation, which he practices every day. «At 50 I returned “home”: I meditate, I pray, I think, I read, I study». The balance of the mind is also reflected in that of the body, with excellent shape achieved thanks to daily physical activity. Among his priorities, he explains, there is not the search for a woman, but if love comes he will be able to welcome it: because he has learned a lot from his experience as a couple.

Fabio Volo tells of living alone for two years now, near the house of his ex-partner. On excellent terms with her, the two experience a happy balance of an extended family: «The children stay with me for a week and with her for a week, during that week they stay with me for a day and with her for a day». Holidays, Sunday lunches and dinners, occasionally, all together. A harmony that comes from respect. “I’ve never cheated on Johanna. I’ve always been faithful to her.”, replies Volo after the rumors about the betrayal as the cause of the separation. Which instead originated after a long crisis: «I didn’t think I would leave myself, and that I would find myself single. When the moment came “maybe it’s better if we break up”, of the two I was the more scared ». But he adds: «Johanna and I it’s not that we no longer love each other because we are no longer together: love has transformed. If in the relationship the two people don’t bring out the best part of the other, they can either stay together to be able to say that they have been together for fifty years, as if it were a prize, or they can say “we continue to love each other even if we are not under the same roof””. And again: “I would have stayed with Johanna all my life if she had gone well, I’m not” against the couple “, I don’t make plans, but if there isn’t something in there that keeps me alive, I can’t go on”.

Volo explains how there is nothing that justifies keeping together a relationship that has no preconditions, not even “for the children”. “The true misunderstanding is that people say: “I’m together for the children”. Instead it is: “we must leave each other for the children”. Because they deserve the truth, and if you, who are the person they respect the most, tell them lies, then you send them out into the world and they will say: if my father lied to me, if my mother lied to me, then why should I trust this person?