Of all my failures to offset the mortification of wanting, expecting, or caring too much, the most humiliating was having no real answer for the love of a good man. It humbled me.

So much of falling in love is a biographical project, we turn our stories over and hope for the best. Should you inspire the full-dress treatment, you will find yourself loved but also much altered.

There was something fundamentally embarrassing about being a young woman…[the] embarrassment of wanting to be more assured, more substantive, more whole, of moving to tap resources that simply weren’t there.