" All mature adults must accept that they are essentially unknowable--and that they will never know the one they love. Even when we kiss there is distance; it is a distance that cannot be bridged by romantic love and must be respected if a relationship is to succeed. The real metric by which we can gauge the authenticity of love is not how close we want to be, how merged and intermingled, but how far we can stand apart and still be together. "

― Frank Tallis , The Incurable Romantic and Other Tales of Madness and Desire