I am about halfway through Nicholas Spark's novel The Notebook and a couple of passages have really gotten my attention.

The first is the inner thoughts of a woman named Allie, thinking of her fiance, Lon.

Quote: But there was something else that made her want to wait, and it had to do with Lon himself. He was driven in his work, and it always commanded most of his attention. Work came first, and for him there was no time for poems and wasted evenings and rocking on porches. She knew this was why he was successful, and part of her respected him for that. But she also sensed that it wasn't enough. She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.

You start out being second, but things change over the years. You and your husband join a church or a social club, and he discovers all of the potential business connections there. You slide down to third. Children arrive, and you slide down to fourth...fifth...Hobbies come and you slide down some more until eventually you are no more than an afterthought, and sometimes, in the stillness and the darkness of the middle of the night, only the tears trickling down your cheeks give you the evidence that you still exist...