Quotes About Intimacy

John, I'm not saying that if you keep My commandments, you prove to Me that you love Me," He said. "I already know whether you love Me or not! What I'm saying is if a man falls head over heels in love with Me, he will be the one enabled to keep My commandments!

She still said nothing and I purposely did not look at her because I did not wish either to press her or to embarrass her. I was in love with her, and my heart went out to her as she tried to fathom her own feelings. I felt like saying: Don't bother to explain, darling. I know it all. Instead, the calculating side of my mind was at work: the side that plotted carefully, planned to get what it wanted and nearly always succeeded.

You were never a real Avery," he hissed. "You know that, don't you?" "I do," I said. "But Christ on a bike, you came close. You came damned close.

One single syllable of intimacy and the world is put to rights.

A marriage should be about friendship and companionship, not about sex.

He held it out to Maude, who leaned forward, keeping her eyes locked on his as the cigarette began to spark, and then she sat back again, her left hand poised on the mattress behind her. She continued to stare at him before turning her face towards the ceiling and blowing a great cloud of white smoke in the air, as if she was preparing to announce the election of a new Pope.

The night was warmer than most I had known; we could breathe without seeing clouds of unpoken words dissolving into the atmosphere before us.

peaceful in the knowledge that a long and happy relationship negates the need for constant chatter. Zoya and I had long perfected the art of sitting silently in each other's company for hours on end, while never running out of things to say.

a person who never learned to trust confuses intensity with intimacy, obsession with care, and control with security.

The wounded inner child contaminates intimacy in relationships because he has no sense of his authentic self. The greatest wound a child can receive is the rejection of his authentic self. When a parent cannot affirm his child's feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child's authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up.

Most people have a way to go in terms of developing intimacy and connecting skills when they get married or enter a long-term relationship. But the great thing about a committed relationship is that the relationship itself is a form of therapy. If both partners are committed, most of their differences can be worked out and even appreciated. Shame as the root feeling of humility allows each partner to appreciate and accept the other's foibles and idiosyncrasies.

Intimacy requires vulnerability and a lack of defensiveness. Intimacy requires healthy shame.

relationship itself is a form of therapy.

Control madness causes severe relationship problems. There is no way to be intimate with a partner who distrusts you. Intimacy demands that each partner accept the other just the way he or she is.

As addiction specialist Patrick Carnes has pointed out, a person who never learned to trust confuses intensity with intimacy, obsession with care, and control with security.

It is impossible to be intimate if you have no sense of self. How can you share yourself with another if you do not really know who you are? How can anyone know you if you do not know who you really are? One way a person builds a strong sense of self is by developing strong boundaries

With a false self, intimacy is impossible.

It's difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Conflulence creates pseudointimacy.

The best way to come out of hiding is to find a nonshaming intimate person or social network. The operative word here is "intimate." We have to get on a core, gut level because shame is core, gut level stuff. Toxic shame masks our deepest secrets about ourselves; it embodies our belief that we are essentially defective.

If you're willing to love and accept yourself unconditionally, you will allow yourself time to just be. You will set aside times when there's nothing you have to do and nowhere you have to go. You will allow yourself solitude, a nourishing time of aloneness. You will take time for hygiene and exercise. You will take time for fun and entertainment. You will take vacations. You will take time to work at your sex life.

Because the roles maintain the balance of the system, they exist for the system. The children give up their own reality to take care of the family system—to keep it whole and balanced. Each form of abandonment breaks the interpersonal bridge and the mutual-intimacy bond. A child is precious and incomparable. Unless treated with value and love, this sense of preciousness and incomparability diminishes. In toxic, internalized shame, it disappears completely.

I like you very much as a person," he said […] "I think I'm going to like you just as much as a woman." "I hope so," she answered with equal formality. "We may have to go a lot of places together.

A girl never can predict who might wander into her boudoir during a bubble bath.

I sat thinking. How it was she who'd mentioned love first. How she seemed to be waiting, the door still between us, for me to act. And I imagined that if I reached for her I would find her where she lay waiting in the water, and my fingers would glide over her bare wet skin until every inch of her, every crook and hollow, would become mine. I would vouch for her with my life.