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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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Harriet Lerner
Divides
Differences
Also
Enliven
Enrich
Inform
Threaten
Divide

More quotes by 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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Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.
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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.
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Through words we come to know the other person--and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice.
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
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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
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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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No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
Harriet Lerner
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Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self.
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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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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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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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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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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 pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
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
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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.
Harriet Lerner
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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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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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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