“Why did I have to love him so much if we’re not going to end up together?”

“I do. I still love him so much. And I feel so worthless because he doesn’t love me anymore.”

“I love where he and I stand right now. It’s like we’re on the brink, and everything’s full of excitement and potential precisely because the heavy making out is still something to look forward to. I realize we can’t remain PG-rated forever. I’m all too aware, though, how easy it is to let hooking up become the crux of a relationship. Then you forget how to just be together and why you should stay together. So for the meantime I’d like to take things slowly in order to prevent hooking up from ever getting too important.Amy would say I’m overreacting, but I’m just trying to learn from past mistakes.”

“One of the pitfalls of having an ex-boyfriend is that people still pair you together in their memories, and sooner or later someone’s bound to mention him. And now that it has happened . . . I can’t say I feel nothing. I don’t think it’s possible to get royally dumped by the only boy I’ve ever done it with, let alone loved, and then feel nothing when he’s brought up in conversation.”

“I can live without a boy. So why does it feel like I'm going to die?”

“I remember another thing Cosmo said. It typically takes half the time you’re dating a guy to fall out of love with him. My ex and I were together almost ten months before he admitted over the holidays that he’d fallen out of love with me, so by that measure I should’ve been cured weeks ago. But once you’ve anticipated spending forever with someone, I’m not convinced you can ever feel complete after being uncoupled. I think you just learn to live without the person. Like when someone dies, you don’t stop loving them just because they’re not around to love you back anymore. Breakups truly are a kind of death.”

“Some scientists hypothesize that having children is the only reason romantic love came about. It kept couples together long enough to mate and see a baby through infancy.”