Love the One You’re With by Emily Giffin Archive

"Sex on and against hard surfaces might look hot in the movies, but in real life it is uncomfortable, overrated, and contrived." - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

"That's the thing about love--even slight differences are readily apparent, marked by small but irrefutable changes in behavior. Little things, like instead of calling me right back, he'd wait a few hours, sometimes even a full day. He started going out with the boys on a regular basis again, and joined an ice hockey intramural team that played on Saturday nights. We began to watch television at night rather than just talk, and sometimes he was too tired for sex, unfathomable in our early days when he'd often wake me up in the middle of the night, touching me everywhere. And when we did make love, there was all too often a feeling of remoteness afterward. A disconnect as he'd roll away from me or stare into space, lost in his own, private thoughts, another mysterious place." - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

"'A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.'" - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

"To add insult to injury, Andy falls right to sleep that night--which is about the most galling thing you can do after a fight, or in our case, a standoff. No tossing or turning or stewing beside me in the dark. Just cold indifference as he kissed me goodnight, followed by an easy, deep slumber. Of course, this has the infuriating effect of keeping me wide awake, replaying the evening, then the past few weeks, and the few months before that. After all, there is nothing like a little argument-induced insomnia to shift you into a state of frenzied hyper-analysis of fury." - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

"I switch Andy's lamp off again, and get back in bed, feeling as if I should cry, but realizing with a mix of fear and relief that all my emotions are dulled and watered-down versions of what I felt just minutes before when Andy was in the room with me. In fact, I'm so composed and detached that it's almost as if I'm watching the aftermath of another couple's big fight, merely waiting to find out what will happen next: Will she stay or will she go?" - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

"I close my eyes, inhale, and feel a rush of heat and energy that takes my breath away. It is the feeling of wanting something so much that it borders on an actual need, and the power and urgency of this need overwhelms me." - Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

“‘I still love him.  I will always love him.’  ’No,’ she said.  ’You were only in love with the idea of love.  And now you are in love with the idea of a broken heart . . . You’re acting like an angst-ridden adolescent.” – Love the One You’re With by Emily Giffin

“She said everyone needs to get dumped once–that it’s part of life–and that obviously things weren’t meant to be.  ’Better now than down the road with three kids,’ she said–although I remember thinking I would have preferred the latter.  I would have preferred to have something lasting with Leo, no matter what the accompanying pain.” [...]

“I’d awaken, and for a few, fleeting seconds, I’d actually believe that we were back together again.  That the breakup was the dream and that I had only to open my eyes and find him right there beside me.  Instead, grim reality would set in again.  Leo was moving on to a new life without [...]

“But a lot of things had to happen before I married Andy and after that letter from Margot arrived in the mail.  A lot of things.  And one of them was Leo.  The one I would love before I loved Andy.  The one I would grow to hate, but still love, long after we broke [...]