Breaking up isn't something that gets done to you; its something that happens with you.
Interpretation
Breaking up is a mutual process that involves both parties rather than being an event imposed on one person.
This quote emphasizes the collaborative nature of a breakup, suggesting that it is not just a unilateral decision but rather a shared experience between both individuals in the relationship. It highlights the emotional and psychological journey that both partners undergo during the process, acknowledging that both play an active role in the dissolution of their bond.
In practice
In a speech about healing from relationships, you could say: 'As John Green eloquently put it, breaking up isn't something that gets done to you; it's something that happens with you.'
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
I think we will have full marriage rights in Colorado. But in 1992, there was a very hateful Amendment 2 that basically made it legal for any institution to deny gays and lesbians access, whether it's hospitals or restaurants or employment. Anybody could fire you or not let you in a restaurant because you were gay.
The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face.
There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
Boundaries are the lines we draw that mark off our autonomy and that of other people, that protect our privacy and that of others. Boundaries allow for intimate connection without dissolving or losing one's sense of self.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had.
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