Sometimes in life, you have to make things happen. That you can change your life if you're willing to let go of the old and actively look for the new. That even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

It's all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you're avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?

Marriage should be about fun,” she says gently. “It’s about friendship, and laughter, and trust, and fun. If it’s not fun, if you take it all too seriously, what’s the point? You know I’ve been with Andy for fifteen years, and the reason it still works is because he’s my best friend and he still makes me laugh. Admittedly, not all the time, and often we get completely bogged down in work, and the kids, and life, but he’s still the person I most want to phone when anything happens in life, and he’s still the person who makes me laugh the most.

Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.

Life, Steffi has learned, carries on around the pain, making room for it, absorbing it until it becomes part of the daily fabric, wrapping itself around you and lodging itself in your heart.

Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways

It's about thinking that being blonde and slim and perfect will automatically bring you happiness, and then discovering that life is full of as many disappointments as there were before.