Quotes about relationships

If our binoculars search for our partner’s best intent, it will usually be found.

The best way to use these lists to replace anger with love in real life is to nurture each other by doing for your partner what your partner normally does for you.

It never occurs to most of us at a moment of disagreement with our partner to take the time to appreciate our partner’s positive character strengths as reflected in a stance we disagree with. When we do that, it allows our partner to know that no matter which decision she or he makes, our trust in their underlying character is never in question. It turns every disagreement into a potential gift of love.

Our choice of partners is perhaps the clearest single statement of our choice of values. Therefore, when we blame our partner for anything, we should really be confronting ourselves. Not as in “Yes, I made a bad choice,” but as in “How does this choice reflect my values?”

"I know how you think you feel about me, you don't though. You just like me because I'm safe. There's no risk. And then you never have to try to have a real relationship because you can use me as an excuse."

Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is. Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own.

People are more important than things."

Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcomed.

In my experience, it takes only one person to have a successful relationship, and that's me.

The teacher you need is the person you’re living with.

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don’t. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary, always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly incongruous is often the most natural.