“ Because were all just little slices of Swiss cheese, covered with holes and imperfections, hoping someone will take the time to fill us in.

“ But when we finally get them, when we’re with that person whom we’ve chosen to be there for everything from poorly-lit daytime sex to arguing over how to fold the hand towels, how can we be sure that we’re fitting them, too? They certainly have a space to be taken up, and are we really filling out the corners? Is that space going to change over time, and our rigid sides will no longer fit the way they used to? It’s a terrifying notion, this idea that we walk around with needs to be met and quotas to be reached, expecting someone else to smooth out our edges and adapt to fit the same position, even as we change. It seems set up to fail. And seeing two people who have managed to be strong where the other is weak — to complete them the way we’d all love to be completed — fills one with a combination of jealousy and confusion. How is this even possible?

“ Relationships are never easy. Some days you’re going to wake up and that love you know you have for the person in the bed next to you, isn’t going to come so naturally. We always say “no one told us it was going to be this hard” but they did. We choose not to listen because it seems so unreasonable that one day, you will find yourself doubting your love for that person. The only way you can make a relationship last is if you work at it every day and never give up on it. Because if you fight and argue and quarrel with that person and still can’t imagine leaving them, then you love them. And that’s the kind of love that’s forever.

“ But it’s sad that you can’t know yourself without being compared to others.

“ You know why people stress over things? Because there aren’t any easy answers.

“ I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

“ I thought I knew you. But you proved me wrong. At the end of it all, the only one I can depend on is myself. I keep telling myself, maybe I shouldn’t ask for so much. But in reality, it really isn’t all that much. If you say you’re going to do something, follow through with it. Don’t leave me hanging because of some excuse. I don’t want to hear it. If you make a promise, keep it. If you know you can’t keep it, don’t make that promise. It’s as simple as that.