Xu Zhou, 36, is an associate professor at a university who studies intimate relationships. Her marriage has long existed in name only. Her husband Gao Heng is silent, stable and suffocating. Her daughter has gradually grown into another woman who needs to be understood. She prides herself on being calm and rational, but in a lecture she meets Lin Xu, a man who opposes her theory and questions her with naked truth, "You study love, but you dare not love."
From marital rifts and motherhood struggles to the resumption of lust and the loss of identity, Xu Zhou's life was forced to be dismantled and reorganized. Her mother's indifferent upbringing, her daughter's silent dependence, and her lover's brief flame all made her realize that she was not a woman "choosing" whether to love or not to love, but that she had never been allowed to be her complete self.
She finally understood that a decent farewell was not to leave someone decently, but to say goodbye decently to the self who endured and survived.
