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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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Harriet Lerner
Physics
Fundamental
Fundamentals
Pursue
Distance
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Law

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.
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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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The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.
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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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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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You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
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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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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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Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along.
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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 want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.
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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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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.
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The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
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.
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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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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.
Harriet Lerner
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We all fear change, even as we seek it.
Harriet Lerner