Quotes About Relationships

His security rests not only on what Alice does but also on what she thinks. Her fantasies are proof of her freedom and separateness, and that

When you pick a partner, you pick a story, and then you find yourself in a play you never auditioned for. And that is when the narratives clash.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn't our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness.1 So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.

Rather than inhibiting a couple's sexuality, recognizing the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. We

Intimacy is "into-me-see." I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings—in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it.

To doggedly look for marital causes in cases like these is an example of what's known as the "streetlight effect," where the drunken man is searching for his missing keys not where he dropped them but where the light is. Human beings have a tendency to look for things in the places where it is easiest to search for them rather than in the places where the truth is more likely to be found.

When we imbue our partner with godly attributes and we expect him or her to uplift us from the mundane to the sublime, we create, as Johnson puts it, an "unholy muddle of two holy loves"4 that cannot help but disappoint.

Not only do we have endless demands, but on top of it all we want to be happy. That was once reserved for the afterlife. We've brought heaven down to earth, within reach of all, and now happiness is no longer just a pursuit, but a mandate. We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long. It's a tall order for a party of two.

Passion is unpredictable; it doesn't follow the dictates of cause and effect. What works on Monday might not work on Thursday. The solution is often a surprise, not the result of the kind of work you've been doing until now.

Monogamy is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it confirms our specialness. Infidelity says, You're not so special after all. It shatters the grand ambition of love.

When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable.

As children we have the opportunity to play at other roles; as adults we often find ourselves confined by the ones we've been assigned or the ones we have chosen. When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: What other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

marks on his firstborn son. More often than not, Garth chose to take the blows to protect his helpless mother and his younger brother. Terry Real, who has written extensively about men in relationships, describes a particular "unholy triangle" between "the powerful, irresponsible, and/or abusive father, the codependent, downtrodden wife, and the sweet son caught in the middle.

I used to think I knew who I was, who he was, and suddenly I don't recognize us, neither him nor me . . . My entire life, as I've led it up to this moment, has crumbled, like in those earthquakes where the very ground devours itself and vanishes beneath your feet while you're making your escape. There is no turning back. —Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity.

Instead, many of my patients describe swinging back and forth in a rapid succession of contradictory emotions. "I love you! I hate you! Hold me! Don't touch me! Take your shit and get out! Don't leave me! You scumbag! Do you still love me? Fuck you! Fuck me!" Such a blitz of reactions is to be expected and is likely to go on for some time.

Understanding infidelity does not mean justifying it.

Secrets and lies are at the heart of every affair, and they heighten both the excitement of the lovers and the pain of the betrayed.

Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment.

We interpret the lack of sexual interest as proof that women's sexual drive is inherently less strong. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think that it is a drive that needs to be stoked more intensely and more imaginatively—and first and foremost by her, not only by her partner.

The permanence and stability that we seek in our intimate connections can stifle their sexual spark, leading to what Mitchell calls "expressions of exuberant defiance,"3 otherwise known as affairs. Adulterers

Craig loved being loved by me more than he loved me.

Infidelity happens in good marriages, in bad marriages, and even when adultery is punishable by death. It happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. And the freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete.