Built-in expiration

"My meeting with him was not a date, despite how I’d nervously smoothed my hair throughout and worried about coffee stains on my teeth. Yet it reminded me right then of a brief love affair, the kind you have when you are about to move from a familiar place to somewhere new, and you begin a romance with a built-in expiration.

And when the time comes for the affair to end, you are sad but grateful, because having had someone who understood you perfectly in that moment helps you make the transition, allows you to walk into the uncertain night and toward that unknown place with a clearer sense of who you are and where you’ve been, your heart filled with all that’s gone and with everything that you will never, ever stop loving."
-Leah Carroll
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/fashion/24love.html?pagewanted=2&ref=style