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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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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.
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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 strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
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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.
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
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Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.
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Differences don’t just threaten and divide us. They also inform, enrich, and enliven us.
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Silence can pose a greater threat than the difficult truth.
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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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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.
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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 miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
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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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deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.
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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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If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
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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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We all fear change, even as we seek it.
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What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same.
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