The novel uses Lauren and Ryan’s marital complexities to explore the various ways in which marital separation can alter each individual’s understanding of relationships and self-identity. At the start of the novel, Lauren and Ryan’s marriage has been “full of tension, a tension that is only relieved by saying good-bye or good night” (4). Their decision to separate is therefore inspired by their desire to understand what they want from each other and who they are when they are apart. For Lauren, this prospect will require her to become comfortable with solitude for “the first time in [her] life” (87). She initially hopes that she will “instantly realize that [she can’t] live without him, and [he’ll] realize he [can’t] live without [her]” (102-103), but by expressing this childish hope, she proves that she does not yet realize the deeper lessons that both she and Ryan must learn during their time apart. Because Lauren and Ryan have been together since they were in college, they have very little experience of building independent lives for themselves. The novel implies that early, hasty marriages may complicate the issue of personal identity. Thus, as the novel unfolds, it is only when Lauren learns to endure her strange new solitude that she finally gains a measure of perspective on her identity, and this transformation in turn informs her perspective on her marriage.

Lauren’s time away from Ryan helps her to redefine her relationship with her husband and find her identity as an independent woman. Her relationships with her family and her concurrent email drafts to Ryan also help her to survive her marital separation and to learn from it. In Part 4, Chapter 3, one of Lauren’s emails to Ryan conveys how the separation has positively impacted her over time. She writes:

I thought at one point that maybe if I learned who you truly are, then I could love you again. Then I thought maybe if I learn who I really am, what I really want, then I could love you again. I have been grasping at things for months, trying to learn a lesson big enough, important enough, all-encompassing enough that it brings us back together. But mostly, I’m just learning lessons about how to live my life. I’m learning how to be a better sister. I’m learning just how strong my mother has always been. That I should take my grandmother’s advice more often. That sex can be healing. (245-246)

In this passage, the use of repetition, anaphora, and rhythm conveys Lauren’s focused, determined state of mind. She is communicating how the separation has benefited her, and her words are focused on her own experiences; while she is ostensibly writing to Ryan, she does not demonstrate true awareness of him as a real audience. In her mind, she is writing a hypothetical letter to him, and it is not until the novel’s end that both Ryan and Lauren admit to reading each other’s email drafts and learning from these quasi-confessions. In the moment that Lauren first writes these words, she is using her time away from Ryan to gain a new understanding of her own life, and Ryan does the same. Indeed, when they reunite, they have a new outlook on their marriage because they have grown as individuals.