Almost no one ever finds a person with whom they miraculously and intuitively connect across all areas.

However compelling someone may appear to be at the outset, time almost inevitably reveals them as a bit maddening in multiple ways.

We would be better off assuming from the outset that a relatively pronounced degree of pain and discord is going to be our lot.

No one is intuitively good at love.

Through this book, we confront an odd but crucial thought: that love is a skill, not an emotion...

Being satisfied with being single is aprecondition of satisfactory coupledom. We cannot choose wisely whenremaining single feels unbearable. We have to be at peace with the prospect ofmany years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a goodrelationship, or we’ll love no longer being single rather more than we love thepartner who spared us being so.

We may believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity.

The central solution to all this trouble is to normalise a new and more accurate picture of emotional functioning: to make it clear just how healthy and mature it is to be fragile and in repeated need of reassurance – and at the same time, how difficult it is to reveal one’s vulnerable dependence.