Diane Vaughan Quotes

My concern always has been with how - not why - people make transitions out of relationships. Many times the people I talked to did not understand why themselves. Even when they thought they knew, the reasons changed, so that what seemed to explain it at one time often did not seem important six months later.

...for no matter whether the relationship was of short or long duration, no matter whether the partners were rich or poor, gay or straight, young or old, living together or married, giving up the relationship was hard for both people.

Uncoupling is a dramatic life event, whose importance is reflected in the eagerness of people to discuss their relationships even years later. Indeed, in attempting to put the story in chronological order, there was no one who was not visited again by sorrow and loss in the telling of it, regardless of the passage of time.