Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change

You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve.

. Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before.

Trust yourself. It’s Sugar’s golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light.

It’s going to be difficult, but that’s no surprise. The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

Sometimes the greatest truth isn’t in the confession, but rather in the lesson learned.

Acceptance asks only that you embrace what’s true.