Passionate investment leaves us vulnerable to loss. And sometimes, no matter how clever we are, we must lose.

Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.

There is a time to separate from our mother. But unless we are ready to separate-unless we are ready to leave her and be left-anything is better than separation.

many of us are done with adolescence before we are done with adolescent love.

We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.

Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.

Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone--childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be.