Coming Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma

Relationships are one of the most important vehicles by which we create our identities and through which we define ourselves. A relationship is a process, not a destination. ...There are only two kinds of relationships -- One is a child in a family, the other is as a grownup with a partner.
p 13 Relationships exist to serve the deepest needs of the individuals in them.
p 19 We are all going about the business of becoming, or trying to become, ourselves.
p 20 We tend to think of childhood and adulthood as two distinctly different episodes of self--We live our lives as adults, for the most part, based on emotional patterns we learned as children.
p 26 Our loving relationships are where we patch, mend and repair the overnight cases of our childhood so we can live in dignity and comfort in adulthood.
p 28 We form relationships to accomplish our developmental tasks, whether or not we are aware of this. And so it follows naturally that relationships end because developmental tasks have been completed.
p 46 "...they had given one another the remarkable experience of giving and receiving exactly what they each needed at the time."
p 82 (when the relationship is over) you have an amazed awareness that you are losing not only a person, but also a history, a way of being, a social context, a sense of identity, a blueprint of your future and a basic definition of yourself.
p 90 "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT" is wildly inappropriate blaming to deal with an incredible sense of loss.
p 104 Somewhere along the way in the evolution of this parting, there is an event which makes it very clear at the deepest emotional level that the relationship is not EVER going to work. This is the "something snapped" phenomena. The door closes.
p 107 As long as we are still emotionally engaged in the old relationship, we are unavailable for any satisfying relationship which may follow.
p 124 Time is a miracle healer.
p 166 Our ended relationships...challenge us to see how we were lazy last time and what we must do next time.
p 168 In their heart of hearts, people always know when their relationships are ending.
p 169 When relationship becomes constant fighting, the only experience you are sharing is CONFLICT. Whenever it gets to this point, it usually means that the life-giving, nourishing elements of the relationship have been depleted and it has moved into a degenerative phase.
p 170 If the same emotional territory is being gone over time and time again, this means you are probably fighting to avoid the end of your relationship.
p 174 When you are feling bored/frustrated about your life, your partner will serve as refuge. When the relationship itself isn't working, you will find that your significant nourishmnet is coming from other sources.
p 177 What we say to one another and how we say it, the amount and depth of our revelations about ourselves, the spirit in which we say what we say -- is one of the most important means of sustaining emotional closeness.

c. 1991 Borgo Press