on love

there is usually a marxist moment in every relationship, the moment when it becomes clear that love is reciprocated. the way it is resolved depends on the balance between self-love and self-hatred. if self-hatred gains the upper hand, then the one who has recieved love will declare that the beloved (on some excuse or other) is that good enough for them (not good enough by virtue of associating with no-goods). but if self-love gains the upper hand, both partners may accept that seeing their love reciprocated is not proof of how low the beloved is, but of how lovable they have themselves turned out to be.
- page 49

my mouth went dry. i felt a strange throbbing movement at the back of my neck. i couldn't concieve how chloe had lost her heart to a deeply compromised piece of footwear. my idea of who she was, my aristophelian certainty of her identity, had never included this sort of enthusiasm. hurt and disturbed by the unexpected turn in our relationship, i asked myself, "how could a woman who walks into my life in sensible flat black shoes favoured by schoolgirls and nuns, and who claims to love and understand me, be drawn to such shoes?" yet outwardly, i simply inquired (in what i trusted to be a remarkably innocent tone, "did you keep the receipt?"
- page 53

yet i remained pensive on the drive home through the evening rush hour. my love began to question itself. what did it mean if things i considered charming about chloe, she considered incidental or irrelevant to her true self. was i reading things into chloe that simply did not belong to her? i looked at the slope of her shoulders and the way a strand of her hair was trapped in the car headrest. she turned toward me and smiled, so that for an instant i saw the gap between her two front teeth. how much of my sensitive, soulful lover lay in my fellow passenger?
- page 83