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    “True intimacy is a human constant.  People of all types find it equally hard to achieve, equally precious to hold.  Age, education, social status, make little difference here; even genius does not presuppose the talent to reveal one’s self completely and completely absorb one’s self in another personality.  Intimacy is to love what concentration is to work:  a simultaneous drawing together to attention and release of energy.” ~ Robert Grudin

      “Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts.” ~ Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships

        “Physical intimacy isn’t and can never be an effective substitute for emotional intimacy.” ~ John Green

          “Simply having a phone on the table or within reach keeps the conversations shallow.  None of this would be a big deal if mobile and app-based conversation were complementing rather than replacing face-to-face conversation, but that’s not the case.  In fact, so many people are turning to digital to have potentially messy and emotional conversations in a less messy and emotional way.  It may bring more calm to a relationship, sure, but it also strips the vulnerability and revelation that come from looking someone in the eye, seeing how your words land, seeing how their body responds, hearing the catch in their breath, understanding what is truly going on between you in a way no emoji chain or composed text could ever express.  That emotional, messy, hard, exhilarating, don’t-know-what’s-coming-next space is where the moments that make life most worth living lie.  Kill the space, kill the moment.  Hello, tidy matrix and numbed-out life.” ~ Jonathan Fields, How To Live A Good Life

            “While investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience.  There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same skill or craft for half your lifetime.  Now that I’m in my thirties, I can finally recognize that commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would otherwise never be available to me, no matter where I went or what I did.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

              “If people cheat, it’s because something other than the relationship is more important to them.  It may be power over others.  It may be validation through sex.  It may be giving in to their own impulses.  Whatever it is, it’s clear that the cheater’s values are not aligned in a way to support a healthy relationship.  And if the cheater doesn’t admit this or come to terms with it, if he just gives the old ‘I don’t know what I was thinking; I was stressed out and drunk and she was there’ response, then he lacks the serious self-awareness necessary to solve any relationship problems.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

                “To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it.  There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career.  And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck