How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays

by Mandy Len Catron

My job was not to choose a good person to love, but rather to be good to the person I’d chosen. Extraordinary love was not defined by the intensity with which you wanted someone, but by generosity and kindness

and a deep sense of friendship. You had to love someone and like them.

If I could do it over, I would just pick someone whose ideas about marriage and family looked more like mine in the first place.

At least we aren’t indifferent to each other, I would tell myself, as if drama and indifference were the only two options.)

And for a few years, having a good love story felt a lot like having good love.

Sacrifices must be made.

“an unconscious conviction that, if a woman is not wed, it’s not because she’s made a set of active choices, but rather that she has not been selected—chosen, desired, valued enough.”

“The important thing about getting married,” Peter urged, “is that you’re choosing to choose.”

My focus on fixing and maintaining the relationship—which was really about finding a way to make him keep loving me—was a distraction from a bigger question: Even if we did keep loving each other, were we capable of being good to each other (and for each other)? Could we make that choice every day?