“I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again.""Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy and then a desperate desire for the cave. He will get lonely there eventually and come back.""To me?"He doesn't pause. "To someone new.""And I'll have to watch another girl?""You will have to, but you will also know what lies ahead for that poor girl.”

“I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming.I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright. I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.You are a great woman and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. But if left with just the experience we've shared, I know my life was better because of it.”

“He meant everything he said, when he said it. But this is his default. And it won out. Right now you're depressed about one thing. Before you were depressed about everything. These are good times for you.""I'm afraid of loving again. I'm afraid I've lost my faith.""You haven't.""The trapdoor I have in my mind? That can go to those bad places? It's almost gave way again.""You know the ways to keep it nailed shut.”

“Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you.”

“It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.”

“When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it's not because I wish he were someone else, it's because it's such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned.”

“It's as if he can no longer acknowledge the love he felt or the pain I am in. I have been dismissed. I don't think I was smarter or as beautiful as the other girls he did this to. It's just that I was me. It was all I had.”