Alex and Christie go on two dates: dinner at an Irish pub and an evening of jazz. Over jazz, Christie tells Alex about Dr. Rosen and group, and Alex tells her that his parents married and divorced each other twice. Sharing together feels like the type of trust and vulnerability she’s only experienced in group.

Christie keeps dating Alex, waiting for it to go south. She runs and swims with him because he’s into triathlons. Dr. Rosen holds up a picture of Christie and Alex in formalwear, and the other group members give their opinions: Grandma Maggie, who attributes her recent marriage to Dr. Rosen, tells Christie she’s next. Brad, who’s obsessed with money, approves on the grounds of combined net worth. Max takes credit, and Lorne is supportive but a little grumpy.

Alex makes Christie chili with a secret ingredient—love—and in group, Lorne makes fun of it. Things are getting serious with Alex: Christie tells her mom about him, and she tells Alex she loves him. Lorne asks if he said it back.

Christie goes to St. Petersburg with Patrice and doesn’t hear much from Alex. She is so worried about the relationship that she can’t enjoy the vacation. When she gets home, he breaks up with her, and she breaks some dishes in anger. She brings the dishes to group and cuts her leg on the way there. Afterward, she goes to brunch with Max, Lorne, and Brad (without the dishes). At the next session, she stabs herself with a penknife hidden in her purse until Dr. Rosen confiscates it. The group rallies around her in other ways, but she still cries in public, experiences diarrhea, and shames herself for her unattachable heart.

Christie is assigned to a case involving travel to Germany because she’s single and childless. Even though Dr. Rosen celebrates the case and her career, she tells him to “focus on [her] personal life” (186). Christie calls her mom and learns that she married later than all her friends too. This is news to Christie, who feels validated by it.

While in Germany, Christie sees a group of nudists bathing, eating, and drinking below her hotel room. It depresses her. She calls Dr. Rosen, but he doesn’t answer. When the team needs someone to fly back to Chicago, Christie volunteers. She ends up catching a train when a flight is canceled and can only think about how Dr. Rosen has let her down. She decides to drop him and group and sends him a short, emotionless email.

At the next session, Dr. Rosen is concerned about her. Christie, remembering a time she’d cut up a teddy bear he owned, is surprised he isn’t angry. He’s scared for her, which Christie sees as another sign of her failure. She retreats from, but does not drop out of, the group.

Christie asks to be taken off the German case after a second trip results in suicidal ideation. She runs into Alex and his new girlfriend in her apartment building and decides to buy a new place. In order to do so, she must sign legal documents that name her a spinster.

In group, she interrupts Max to express doubt about the apartment. He calls her out, and she throws her shoe at him. They get up in each other’s faces and yell. After a moment of silence, Max sits back down. Christie is surprised that Dr. Rosen doesn’t praise her for being comfortable with this confrontation. At the end of the meeting, she and Max hug tightly.

Reed calls Christie at her office. They flirt, and then Christie locks her door and masturbates. Christie knows that Reed has been cheating on his wife for years. Reed brings his desire to date to Christie’s first group. Several group members oppose it, but Dr. Rosen lets them do what they want.

Their phone calls and lunches make Christie feels like a bad feminist. After having phone sex while Reed is buying groceries and Christie is in her closet, Christie feels guilty and talks about it in the group Reed is not a part of. Lorne shares that Reed had a similar relationship with Lorne’s wife, Renee. Dr. Rosen points out the implications of Christie hiding this relationship. The group asks Dr. Rosen to boundary this relationship, but he lets Christie make her own decisions.

Christie starts imagining herself in Reed’s life as a second wife, and he starts holding her hand in group. Members of both groups keep begging Dr. Rosen to force the two apart. Christie goes to a party thrown by Clare, her former roommate, without Reed and is distracted by messages from him all night. Clare asks Christie whom she’s texting, and Christie admits that it’s a married man. Although Clare is kind and supportive, the interaction is enough to help Christie realize the realities of her situation, and she doesn’t open Reed’s last texts of the night.

Reed is late with a phone call, which he cancels so that he can take his family to dinner. The next morning, he admits to Christie that it was actually an anniversary dinner with his wife. Christie breaks it off with him and goes for a run and to a 12-step meeting. She calls Patrice and then stays the night at Lorne and Renee’s house. Renee helps Christie set up a profile on JDate, a dating site for Jewish people. Christie calls Dr. Rosen to let him know that she won’t have contact with Reed outside of group and reflects on how much she can trust Dr. Rosen, no matter how crazy things get.

Christie has a date with Brandon, a man from eHarmony. Christie finds Brandon boring after Reed and the Intern and is surprised when he wants to flip her over and enter her from behind without asking for consent. She doesn’t like it but can’t find her voice to tell him that. At group, Lorne nicknames him Dr. Flipper. Brandon learns about group and asks Christie not to talk about him there. Christie agrees.

Everyone at group is full of questions about Brandon the next day (Lorne wants to know if his birthday present to Christie was not flipping her). With Dr. Rosen’s help, Christie tells them that Brandon has asked not to be discussed in therapy. Various group members raise concerns about how this might affect Christie’s treatment and what it might mean for the relationship.

Christie learns that Brandon has been seeing a therapist for nine years. She feels betrayed but isn’t sure she’s “allowed” to leave him (228).

At group, Christie avoids Brandon’s name when asking if she should dump him. Dr. Rosen and other group members say that this is the healthiest relationship she’s had and encourage her to stay in it.

A man named John asks Christie out, and she says yes as a way to define her relationship with Brandon. Brandon tells her to go, so she cancels. Later, Brandon tells Christie that he’s going to stay in Chicago instead of wintering in England so that he can see where things are going with her. That night, he sleeps with her without flipping her. Later he confesses to not having a libido.

Christie struggles in her next several group meetings. The other members of group try to ask her questions, but she won’t share. Dr. Rosen says, “When you agree to keep someone’s secret, you hold their shame” (234). Christie stays silent even as group members try to help her. As the chapter ends, she admits that she’s lonely.

At the meeting before Thanksgiving, Christie is silent as everyone discusses plans for and problems with the holiday. When asked about her plans, Christie cannot admit that she told her family she’d be with Brandon and then he told her he’d be with his family. That would be talking about Brandon. She wants to speak but feels she can’t. She sinks to the floor and pulls her own hair out. People continue to express concern. Then she takes a flowerpot and breaks it over her head. Dr. Rosen allows group to go over time, as Patrice begs her not to hurt herself. Lorne offers her a place for Thanksgiving, and Max says that secret-keeping is not serving her. Finally, Dr. Rosen bandages her forehead.

Brandon and Christie spend Christmas together at the beach and go to lunch with Brandon’s mother after the new year.

The relationship deteriorates. Brandon won’t kiss Christie, no matter how much she brushes her teeth. He is out of town for work more often and always flips her during sex. She can’t talk to him about it. Even though she knows she should be able to discuss how she’s having sex with her partner, she can’t find the words before, during, or after sex.

One day Christie and Brandon run into an old friend of Brandon’s. He asks after a woman named Marcie, and Brandon says he’ll be seeing her in Cancun soon. As this is news to Christie, she goes to her car. Brandon follows, surprised she’s upset, and they break up.

Christie feels a new post-breakup emotion: relief. She tells her new group about the breakup but not anything else. Sitting in group, she is severely chilled, and Dr. Rosen sits on the floor and holds her for the rest of the meeting as she prepares to embrace a new identity.

In addition to Dr. Rosen’s prescriptions “to feel her feelings anywhere, anytime, and to commit no acts that required safety goggles” (245), Christie prescribes exorcising the ghosts of previous relationships by getting a new bed and saying yes to every single social invitation she receives.

One day, she goes on a run before group and realizes that she’ll be okay. Then in group she feels it again, and the members of her group help her process it. Christie realizes that her group loves her.

Christie starts being bolder in her social life, including inviting John, the man who asked her out while she was dating Brandon, to a concert as part of a group. At the concert, she learns that he is ethnically Jewish. He walks her home from the concert and calls her the next day. Max thinks he’s the one. Christie doesn’t want that pressure.

They go on an official date, which goes so well that John emails her: “I think I just went on my last first date” the next day (253). Christie rejoices in her scored, attachable heart.

John seems so perfect that Dr. Rosen tells Christie to ask about his dating history. She learns that he’s had two major relationships, one that ended in cheating and one that fizzled when they realized they were too similar. Christie sets some boundaries: She will be going to group therapy, she will talk about him there, she will not “suck dirty dick” (256), and she will attend 12-step meetings. John is fine with all of that and admits that he read her essays about her therapy experiences.

A few weeks later, John tells her he loves her, though Christie isn’t ready to have sex yet. They keep spending the night together, but she’s holding back from full intimacy. When she asks why she can’t, Dr. Rosen tells her, “Mamaleh, you will when you’re ready” (258). Then, when she’s ready, it happens naturally.

Things get serious between Christie and John. He gives her a Sonicare toothbrush for her birthday (not the engagement ring Dr. Rosen predicted). They go on a trip to India together, and she spends the Christmas/Hanukkah season with his family. Then she comes to group wearing a diamond engagement ring. The whole group celebrates with her, but Christie decides she needs more from Dr. Rosen.

Dr. Rosen and his wife invite John and Christie over for shabbat and give them a tile that says, “Shalom Y’all!” in honor of their Jewish and Texan backgrounds. Dr. Rosen’s wife prepared a meal with all of Christie’s favorite foods, and Dr. Rosen says the blessing for a child over Christie and John individually.

During the drive home, Christie cries her way through this transition into a new life with John. He steadily listens to and comforts her.

The night of the 2012 election, Christie and John stay home instead of attending an Obama rally despite campaigning for him. Christie can’t stop crying after watching John McCain cede the presidency. Then she sleeps for hours longer than usual. Just in case, she takes a pregnancy test and gets back in bed. She makes John check it. He slowly, quietly comes back from the bathroom: two lines. Christie’s pregnant.

Christie describes her wedding in the final chapter with a focus on what happens between her and her group members. She and her bridesmaids, including four group members, go to the group space. Many others attend the wedding, and Christie has a special dance with Dr. Rosen to “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. So much of her life has been leading to this moment that she is apprehensive about her future. She calls Patrice and Rory, and both validate her and encourage her to “bring it to group” (272).

At the next group meeting, she discusses the joy of her wedding. Then other members share other things.

Christie kisses her daughter goodbye and heads off to her early-morning group-therapy session. She describes John coming home from business trips, giving his all to the kids, and having nothing left for Christie. She shares ways that therapy has helped her navigate family stress, especially other people’s anger, and her own psychological complexities, like her relationship with food. She’s been in therapy for a very long time at this point, but it’s worth it. She ends by reassuring a new group member that just showing up to group is enough.