“Most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion,” she said. “They want, most often, to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance.” She reached forward, taking the bottle from Libby’s hand. “But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another—that we can experience rapture without being someone’s other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures—then we’re free, aren’t we?”