TL;DR A comforting read on guiding yourself through heartbreak.
Some sections I loved:
"Culturally, we've focussed our collective systems of justice and redress around money, work, and property.
But in an area that matters just as much to us - love and relationships - we can't contact a lawyer or go to the police with an accusation that someone broke our heart. We're on our own."
" - The cushions on the sofa painfully jab us, reminding of the way our lover would use them while reading at night.
We're surrounded by emotional tripwires. Our heart breaks again and again.
We cannot, as we might at points want to, get rid of the world in which the relationship once played itself out. We can't burn the cushions or uproot the restaurant. To forget, we have to impose a new layer of experience on the things we associate with lost love. We should take a new group of friends to the pizza place ... get fresh acquaintances to hang out with us on the sofa. We have to reclaim the material of our lives from the person who broke our heart.
With a new commitment to forgetting, we can recover some of the hope of the child and the fortitude of the cow."
"No one examined up close is ever anything other than disappointing. Every person we share a life with will prove at points so maddening, we will, on occasion, wish they had never been born ... Once we get over abandonment, the person we need to find is not the one who thinks we are perfect (and will never leave us on this basis) but rather one who can quite clearly see our failings and yet knows how to calmly make peace with them. The lover we need is not someone who stays with us because they think we are irreplaceable but because they've wisely realised that no one is as attractive as they seem at first - and to destroy a relationship is generally only a prelude to novel encounters with frustration and disappointment"
"iv. We learn to temper our expectations. All relationships are seriously imperfect in certain respects; we should endeavour to not ask quite so much of the next person we are with. We will know to be grateful with 'good enough'."