"love the one you're with"

Emily Giffin is one of my favorite authors. I've read all her books- "Something Borrowed", "Something Blue", "Baby Proof", and my current favorite: "Love the One You're With." I don't necessarily relate to her story lines but I love her writing. Even though it's probably considered chick lit, I've read enough of those kinds of books to see that her book isn't as frivolous or as cheesy.

Some of my favorite passages:

"...I can't get over the feeling of being cheated. At the most, I was cheated out of the choice for a different life- a choice I had the right to make and that nobody else should have made for me. At the very least, I was cheated out of the all-important closure- knowledge that would have made me feel better about the worst thing to ever happen to me short of my mother dying, as well as the chance to reconcile my feelings for Leo with the way things ended between us. Yes, we broke up. Yes, Leo did the breaking up. But he regretted it. He loved me enough to come back. I was worth coming back for. It might not have made a different in my life, but it would have made a difference in my heart. I close my eyes, riding a wave of resentment and indignation and more anger still."

"And yet, instead of striking fear in my heart, or giving me pause of any kind, I feel all the more calm, resolute, indignant, as I head back upstairs and get back under the covers. How dare he draw a line in the sand? How dare he not even try to understand what I'm feeling? How dare he back me into a corner with his demands? I try to turn the tables, imagining and homesick, wishing to reconnect with with something or someone. And then I realize that that is why I moved to Atlanta. With him. For him. That is why I'm here now."

"But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what the obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all."

"Instead, I hold that day deep within myself, as a reminder that love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together."