Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.

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.

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

There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take.

Every shrink knows that it's not the event itself but how you respond to it that tells the story. Take ten assorted individuals, expose them all to the same life trial, and they will each suffuse it with exquisite personal detail and meaning.

In asserting that people don't change, what she means is that they don't change for the better. Whereas changing for the worse, that goes without saying.

In spite of what anyone says it’s women who make the rules.