If two people become too much alike, then one becomes unnecessary.
There is a benefit in irritating the hell out of each other. It is a catalyst to getting better.
Love as practiced from the egocentric perspective is finding someone to use.
Do you really see him or her? Do you truly love this person or are you putting a bell jar over your beloved, which will obliterate the real person from your sight?
Hate is not the opposite of love, power is. Love is identity with the other; power is the desire to control the other for our own purposes.
Ask what’s it worth to you to maintain the relationship.
Are you airing out your past?
Talk to the other as if you’d just met them. Who is this person today? Start the day fresh.
Marriage is two people, each struggling to come to terms with their own identity, while at the same time scrambling to come to terms with the other’s identity.
We might want to find out what is wrong and at the crux of the other’s troubles, but we don’t necessarily need to find it out and fix it with them. What the other needs to know is that we are there for them and that they are heard.
Just as with kids, overtalking doesn’t work.
What is irrational to one may be rational to another.
Highly intelligent people think they can skip steps. It’s the intellectual fallacy. Intellectualism is pedanticism: “I know what is right.” True intelligence, though, is about asking. Intuition goes further. Intuition–together with true intelligence–is about the ability to bend.
When in doubt, do nothing.
The first cause of conflict is self-centeredness.
It’s always more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.
Speak TACTFULLY.
You can’t be persuasive when you are abrasive.
You never get your point across when you are cross.
Attack the issue, not each other.
It’s ok to disagree without being disagreeable, to have unity without uniformity, and to walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye.
Coupledom is the union of two great forgivers.
Do not try to manage a relationship. The point of relationships is inclusion, not management.
Don’t let Love run out of air. Handle Love with care
A dose of looney, spontaneous and instinctual creativity can be a smart balance to the extreme rationality and hard-nosed technology in our children’s future.