The Lies That Bind

by Emily Giffin

“Really? Is it?” she pressed. “It’s a good thing to be walled off to possibilities? And new experiences? In your twenties? The time when you should be exploring who you are?”

including her view of feminism, which is all about empowerment and independence from men, whereas my view of feminism has more to do with choice. Women in the twenty-first century (which still sounds so funny to my ears) have options. We can marry or not marry; have children or not have children; be stay-at-home mothers or have careers.

At the end of the day, you just want to be happy and fulfilled and sometimes it’s hard to know what that looks like.”

“The truth is the point,” Jasmine says. “The truth is always the point.”

“Nothing is right or wrong when it comes to grief.”

After all, you reach the mundane, comfortable moments only when a relationship is working. When it’s not working, the passion morphs into something twisted and dark. Drama. Jealousy. A never-ending power struggle.

It feels like an insignificant edit in the scheme of things, more about privacy than about revisionist history. But part of me still worries that the fib is a metaphor for our relationship—that Matthew and I are both pretending things are more ideal than they actually are.

Maybe all relationship journeys are messy and complicated in one way or another, products of two flawed people coming together to form a flawed but, one hopes, stronger union. Maybe the only people who don’t have any reservations amid a marriage proposal are delusional about love—and therefore destined to be disillusioned later in life when things get tough.

I make the conscious decision to be happy and grateful.

told him the truth about absolutely everything. But things aren’t perfect. They’re very far from perfect. The world is unpredictable and unsafe—we know that now more than ever—so maybe it’s about holding on to the things we can really count on.

“You were obsessed. But you have to remember—obsession isn’t love. It just feels like love.”

We may not get do-overs in life, but we can always have fresh starts and new beginnings.

don’t want to rule anything out. I don’t want to be ruled by fear—whether of failure or of the unknown.

While I care about his family’s opinion of me, it can’t factor into our ultimate decision any more than my own family’s feelings can.

a cautionary tale to always follow your heart, but never stop listening to your head, either.

feel detached pity for the twentysomething girl I used to be. The girl who hadn’t yet learned to trust her gut. Who cared so much about what others thought and couldn’t make a move without consulting her friends. Who wanted the fairy tale more than actual fulfillment.

I began to learn that the world treats you the way you demand to be treated.

Suddenly, instead of seeing the world in black and white terms, I saw before me a good person who had simply done some bad things. And I was no different. We had both made mistakes and told lies—some bigger than others—but those mistakes and lies didn’t have to define us.