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When did you begin to see the unexpected gifts that came with your loss?

The next year of university was a struggle and I didn’t think that losing her had taught me anything. It hadn’t yet, because her death didn’t come with instant knowledge; I only knew that it was the most devastating event…

Iris Murdoch once said that ‘love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.’ She’s right – we achieve love by overcoming our narcissism. When, as teens, we begin having relationships, we tend to do so from within our own point of view; we experience our own…

It’s true, of course, that we need friends who we live life closely alongside. But I think there is a case to be made for keeping the more distant friendships ticking along too, even when they remind us of the everyday intimacies that have been lost. Because life takes people from us all the time. …

What do you think the couples who are able to move past an affair have in common?

There are many things that make them succeed. But, in the reverse, I can tell you one ingredient that you know will prevent the success: when the person who betrayed and lied and deceived has very little empathy.…

Susan pointed out a useful contradiction in love: if you lose a sense of yourself as an individual it can damage a relationship, but if you can’t accept that your needs and wants are not the only story, then it will be difficult to understand your partner’s perspective. That’s why it’s useful to th…