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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.

Harriet Lerner

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Harriet Lerner
Relationships
Two
Live
Without
People
Strongest

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
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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.
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I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.
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Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation.
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The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
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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.
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The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.
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Silence can pose a greater threat than the difficult truth.
Harriet Lerner
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You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
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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.
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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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Relationships are most likely to fail when we don't address problems or hold our partner accountable for unfair or irresponsible behavior ... the ability to clarify our values, beliefs, and life goals--and then to keep our behavior congruent with them--is at the heart of a solid marriage.
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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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Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.
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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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Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness.
Harriet Lerner
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The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.
Harriet Lerner
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Wherever you find a wife and mother-in-law slugging it out, you'll find a son who's not speaking up to either his mother or his wife.
Harriet Lerner
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Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.
Harriet Lerner
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The term girl not only serves to avoid certain anxiety-arousing connotations inherent in the word woman regarding aggression, sexuality, and reproduction, it also serves to impart a tone of frivolousness and lack of seriousness to ambitious, intellectual, and competitive striving that women may pursue.
Harriet Lerner