One thing about the ending to The Amber Spyglass I really came to appreciate over the years was Lyra and Will's promise not to hold any future partners they may have in comparison to what they've lost. Because, considering the circumstances, it would have been so easy to have them vow never to love anyone else ever again. To play into the idea that you only get one great love in your life, and anything or anyone else that comes after is inferior.
We have a pair of kids who were destined to save all worlds across the multiverse, who reignited the very spark of consciousness and free will through the simple act of falling in love, and who are now going to be permanently separated just after they've realised what they share. They're going to return to the bench in their own Oxford to be near each other every midsummer's day for the rest of their lives, they vow to find each other again after they die and become one with the universe, "every atom of me and every atom of you", etc. etc., cue the reader's heart cracking clean in two. A sweeping, once in a lifetime love story.
And yet, Will and Lyra acknowledge that they may love again in their lifetimes. It won't be the same as what they shared, but that doesn't mean it will be worth any less, just that it'll be a different relationship. They'll have their yearly hour at the bench to remember their first love, and they'll still let other people into their hearts and cherish them because, after all they've learned and gone through, they need and deserve to live full and happy lives. But a full and happy life does not have to be limited to one love, important as it was to the people involved. And I think it was wonderful of Pullman to include that idea.
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