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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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Harriet Lerner
Failure
Relationship
Waiting
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Persons
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Recipes
First
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
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the body, seeking truth, sends a signal. But decoding it, interpreting its meaning, and knowing how to proceed from there is another matter entirely.
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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.
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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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Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
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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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What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same.
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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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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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The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.
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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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Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.
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Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.
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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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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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Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions.
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Women are raised to be the nurturers and steadiers of rocked boats, to hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it. But it shores up your own dignity and integrity if you're able to say, There are a million things I love about you, and I want our relationship to continue. I forgive you 95 percent, but not this 5 percent.
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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.
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If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.
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