Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.

As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn't disbelieve in. Although she can't credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude.

The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it.

You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.

Autumn can be glorious but menacing too - the long shadows, brisk winds, scurrying leaves, impending frost.

We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions - and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.

Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing - Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high - the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked.