Quotes About Relationships

In John Fletcher's words, "Those have most power to hurt us that we love.

To be enjoyable, a relationship must become more complex. To become more complex, the partners must discover new potentialities in themselves and in each other. To discover these, they must invest attention in each other—so that they can learn what thoughts and feelings, what dreams reside in their partner's mind. This in itself is a never-ending process, a lifetime's task.

The most detailed information about who we are as individuals comes from those we communicate with, and from the way we accomplish our jobs.

Socializing of this kind mimics friendship relations, but it provides few of the benefits of the real thing. Everyone takes pleasure in occasionally passing the time of day chatting, but many people become extremely dependent on a daily "fix" of superficial contacts. This is especially true for individuals who cannot tolerate solitude, and who have little emotional support at home.

creativity must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person but in the relationships within a system.

Lack of true friends is often the main complaint of people confronting an emotional crisis in the second half of life.

Variety and frequency of sexual encounters have taken precedence over the depth and intensity of the relationship in which they are embedded. It is ironic that on this issue the traditional teachings of the churches are closer to a scientific position than the up-to-date beliefs of the populace, for an evolutionary approach confirms that the original purpose of sexuality is making children and binding the parental couple.

People who view television more often than the average tend also to have worse jobs and worse relationships. In a large scale study in Germany, it was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claimed to have. While the opposite trend was found for watching television. The most flow was reported by individuals who read a lot and watched little TV. The least by those who read seldom and watched often.

for real growth, it is necessary to find people whose opinions are interesting and whose conversation is stimulating. A more difficult, but in the long run even more useful, skill to acquire is the ability to tolerate solitude, and to even enjoy it.

nothing angers a woman more than the discovery that in the relationship between man and man there are things that women can never understand.

In my madness I fancied that deep love meant warmth and kindness between two people, and some mutual solace in the hideous loneliness that is the lot of each one of us.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. —OSCAR WILDE

Always be a bridge, not a wall or a weapon.

The Power of Influence I've realized that I choose not to spend much time with people who are trying to change me. If they take me on as a project to "fix," I don't respond well. But when they simply enter my life and accept me unconditionally, I become a different person because of their influence.

We need to become different people in our responses to others, building character traits that allow us to handle their craziness without becoming victims. When we become different, people will respond to us differently. But most important, we'll have the strength of character and the boundaries that allow us to be emotionally healthy, no matter what others do.

It means that we work on our side of the relationship, no matter what happens on the other side. We don't change them; we change ourselves.

Influence means living a healthy emotional life in close proximity to others

But the closer we become, the more the relationship will be challenged. Like a river overflowing its banks and moving in new directions, people are unpredictable. When someone we know goes against our expectations, we're uncomfortable and we want to move things back to our set point.

We know we're not the problem, so we may decide that the other person is certifiably crazy.

5. You don't have to be a victim. In a toxic relationship, it's easy to feel sucked dry by another person. It's true that they might never change, and there could always be drama in the relationship. But we don't have to let them mess up our lives.

Contentment in life doesn't come from the absence of conflict; it comes from not giving away our emotional control to the demands of other people. We learn how to be independent in our choices instead of being dependent on what other people do or think.

If they have positive and secure experiences early on, they can feel safe and build positive relationships. If they have negative experiences, they see the world as unsafe and develop skills to negotiate the land mines of life. When that happens, their ways of coping might appear crazy to others.

As Christians, we're not salespeople; we're just introducing mutual friends.

We will all be far better spouses, parents, and leaders as we take time to grow in prayer.