Often, those who bruise easily spend too much time thinking about themselves. I'd go so far as to say that oversensitivity is a privilege of the underoccupied. The majority of people don't have the time to lavish care on emotional wounds - they're too busy getting on with living.
Television executives only commission something that somebody else has already commissioned that's doing well on another station - they're afraid of expecting an audience to concentrate for longer than three minutes on any particular item.
In romance, we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner's foibles in intimate detail; in friendship, we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.
I can't sleep in an isolated place without pills, earplugs, and both my children in bed with me for fear of scary, feral characters with a hankering for the wilderness.
Having lived a full and stimulating life before I had my kids, I've relished every minute I've had to spend with them and felt a degree of confidence in dealing with their trials and tribulations to date.
You only need to look at Jane Austen to see how crossed wires can become a defining aspect of romantic life. Then again, if the course of true love ran more smoothly, it would have a terribly detrimental effect on our cache of love stories.
We invest less in our friendships and expect more of friends than any other relationship. We spend days working out where to book for a romantic dinner, weeks wondering how to celebrate a partner or parent's birthday, and seconds forgetting a friend's important anniversary.
Life is rife with frustrations, jealousies and, on occasion, an overwhelming sense of its injustices, but it's a big mistake to let such negative sentiments rule our lives and dictate choices.
Of course, I'd like to earn Jonathan Ross's money, but I don't have sleepless nights wondering when someone's going to knock on my door with sacks of cash.
The point of the feminist movement wasn't simply to set our underwear on fire and muscle into small spaces in the male-dominated workplace, but to create a world where the contribution of both sexes was equally valued and no one's worth was judged on their take-home salary.
Mixed messages are just part and parcel of the romantic terrain, and rather than berate yourself for any crossed wires, you'd do better to work on your future resilience.
When I last looked, there weren't queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies' doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child.
Placing 'amicable' and 'separation' together creates an oxymoron - we don't usually decide to end a partnership until the very sight of our soon-to-be ex fills us with disgust, misery, agony or a combination of all three.
Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in; external situations cause internal friction; you grow apart and then bounce back together.
Contrary to popular mythology, the best and most durable relationships are based not on vulnerability or passion but on a conjugation of positive attributes, a meeting of mind, body and soul that is all the more powerful as it is not weighed down with neediness and unreasonable expectation.
For many young women, the dream of independence and a home of their own is a tantalising goal, while a lifetime devoted solely to catering for another person's needs would be hard to countenance.
