Communication Skills are Overrated

Compassion, Marriage, Relationships 0

Isn’t it funny how during the honeymoon period, understanding each other is seldom a problem.  “Communication skills” are highly overrated.  We don’t want to understand; that’s the problem.  We can’t say to our dog or baby, “I want to give you a little feedback on something you’ve been doing lately,” and yet we get along with them just fine.  I know two couples who because of an accident and a stroke can’t hear or talk but still are able to move past their problems and grow in love.  Work on communicating better, but also work on dwelling in love, the place of true understanding.

— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 48

The Key to Intimate Relationships

Compassion, Relationships 0

Here’s the hot and hard truth:  Only your own loving behavior can make you feel worthy of love.  It’s not rocket science.  The only way to feel lovable is to be loving and compassionate.

Compassion is the most important emotion for forging intimate relationships.  It contributes far more to happiness than love does.  Relationships can be happy with low levels of love and high levels of compassion, but not the other way around.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 207

Not an Endurance Test

Love, Relationships 0

It is a sorry and often heard refrain that “love has vanished from our relationship.”  As with many such statements, this is unfair to love.  It’s not love that has disappeared from the relationship, we have.  Lasting love is not a test of endurance.  When we are able to appreciate all the little things which brought us together, and deepen that appreciation over the years, we stay together.  Such a relationship is one of life’s great success stories.

— Leo Buscaglia, Born for Love, p. 181

You Can Opt Out

Healing, Letting Go, Relationships 0

Although from the outside gaslighting can look like the work of a single, abusive gaslighter, a gaslighting relationship always involves the active participation of two people.  That is, in fact, the good news.  If you’re caught in a gaslighting relationship, you may not be able to change the gaslighter’s behavior, but you can certainly change your own.  Again, it’s not easy, but it is simple:  You can end the gaslighting as soon as you stop trying to win the argument or convince your gaslighter to be reasonable.  Instead, you can simply opt out.…

Gaslighting can occur only when a gaslightee tries — consciously or not — to accommodate the gaslighter, or to get him to see things her way, because she so desperately wants his approval so she can feel whole.

— Dr. Robin Stern, The Gaslight Effect, p. 34-35

Improve Their Weekend

Books, Relationships, Writing 0

Whether you are looking for the next step in your pursuit of success or are just trying to be a better, more successful, wife, mother, or friend — it’s important to remember the people you come into contact with.  It’s important to keep those relationships, and be a friend yourself.  And that’s the way I see my readers.  I may not change their lives with the books I write, but I hope I improve their weekend.

— Debbie Macomber, Knit Together, p. 101

Resentment vs. Compassion

Compassion, Core Value, Relationships 0

Most human beings subjected to the amplification, magnification, and oversimplification of resentment or anger get resentful, contentious, or sulky in return, just like you do.  Resentment and anger also cause you to focus only on your own perspective, to the exclusion of everyone else’s….

On the other hand, compassion not only keeps you from avoiding and attacking, it also motivates behavior to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect, all of which are likely to make things better….  Compassion is power.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 167-169