Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

“I’d like to be single,” Jane replies. “I think most women would. It’s men who don’t know how to do it.”

“When men and women break up, men hate everything about their ex-girlfriend for three months, and then they miss her, and then they think they love her, and that’s when they text her. Meanwhile, she has spent three months loving him and then she hates his guts forever,” he says, leaning in for emphasis, his breath hot and tangy with gin. “We were never meant to be with each other. Men and women are not compatible.”

Here’s what I’m getting at: I don’t know if I really want to move on, because the further away I get from the pain, the further away I get from her.

When someone says they don’t want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren’t good enough. You live through all of it again.”

“You don’t let go once. That’s your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you’ll hear a song or you’ll walk past somewhere you once went together—something will come to the surface that you’d totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.”