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Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

Harriet Lerner

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Harriet Lerner
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More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
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Differences don’t just threaten and divide us. They also inform, enrich, and enliven us.
Harriet Lerner
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Many people value criticism in the early stage of a relationship, but become allergic to it over time. Remember this: No one can survive in a marriage (at least not happily) if they feel more judged than admired. Your partner won't make use of your constructive criticism if there's not a surrounding climate of admiration and respect.
Harriet Lerner
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Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.
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You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
Harriet Lerner
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What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same.
Harriet Lerner
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There are some things for which there is no apology, and on the question of slavery, there is no adequate apology for ripping people out of their homeland and bringing them here in chains. There is no adequate apology for the ongoing horrific legacy of racism.
Harriet Lerner
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Every time I open Facebook, I see a post with something like, We must forgive or be prisoners of our own bitterness and hate. People think that forgiveness is all-or-nothing, but this myth hurts people. You can forgive 10, 97, or 14 percent. Forgiveness is complicated.
Harriet Lerner
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If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.
Harriet Lerner
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We will be in tune with our bodies only if we truly love and honor them. We can't be in good communication with the enemy.
Harriet Lerner
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Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid - they also ask, Do you forgive me?, because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.
Harriet Lerner
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Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.
Harriet Lerner
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Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.
Harriet Lerner
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Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.
Harriet Lerner
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Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.
Harriet Lerner
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If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
Harriet Lerner
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As many have observed, it is easy to tell a lie, but it is almost impossible to tell only one.
Harriet Lerner
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Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
Harriet Lerner
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The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
Harriet Lerner
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Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.
Harriet Lerner