“This relationship is our classroom—we are learning to cultivate care, concern, and compassion in the most intimate and difficult of circumstances. There are few things in life more challenging than being married. The intimacy tends to stir up and expose our most poisonous inner energies. If we can learn to love here, we can love anywhere.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 404)
“‘As long as you do things for the approval of a woman,’ Michaela said, ‘you will never be free. That is a descending hell. And I’ll tell you—when a woman sees that she can bend you, she loses trust in you. We need you to be solid; we need your ‘yes’ to be a yes, and your ‘no’ to be a no. As long as you are twisting and contorting and selling yourself out for the affection of others, you will always be untrustworthy.'”
Will Smith, Will (Page 379)
“I like making friends, I thought. I began trying to listen to and observe what was going on in my head, and a painful realization washed across me: I wasn’t enjoying being with myself. In fact, I wanted to get away from myself as fast as I could. And it dawned on me, If I don’t want to be with me, why the fuck would anybody else wanna be with me?”
Will Smith, Will (Page 375)
“The ability to love yourself improves your ability to be loved. We are unlikely to accept a relationship that is worse than the one we have with ourselves, and thus the person who is happy and comfortable with themselves is in a great position. The person with healthy self-esteem doesn’t have to jump into any relationship because they already have a great one wherever they go.”
James Clear, Blog
“You can’t force your partner to change or heal in the ways you want them to. Even though you may think you know what is best for them and you see a clear way for them to deal with their inner issues or old pain, it does not work to push someone to do work that only they themselves can decide they are ready for. Of course, you can give suggestions and share what has helped you, but every person needs to walk the path of healing themselves, from their own volition.”
Yung Pueblo
“We had concluded that no one can make a person happy. You can make a person smile; you can compose a moment that helps a person to feel good; you can deliver a joke that makes a person laugh; you can create an environment where a person feels safe. We can and must be helpful and kind and loving, but whether a person is happy or not is utterly out of your control. Every person must wage a solitary internal war for their own contentment.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 357)
“Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.”
Kahlil Gibran, via Will (Page 356)
“Nobody gives a shit about anything except how they feel. Feeling good is the most important thing to everyone, everywhere, at all times. We are choosing our words, actions, and behaviors in order to achieve a feeling that we deem positive. There’s nothing more important than feeling how we want to feel. And people determine whether or not you love them by how well they feel you honor their feelings.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 344)
“My mind at the time still correlated performance with love. The entire basis for my self-esteem was foundationally dependent upon whether my woman was happy. My self-image was inexorably bound up in women’s opinion and approval of me. I figured that since I was not receiving the love I so deeply craved, it had to be because of a deficiency in me as the lead character. If I had performed the role of ‘boyfriend’ better, she wouldn’t have cheated.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 142)
“Psychologists have written about how our relationship with our parents in childhood and early adolescence creates our ‘map’ for understanding love in adulthood. When we interact with our parents as children, some behaviors and attitudes win us attention and affection and other behaviors and attitudes cause us to feel abandoned, unsafe, and unloved. The behaviors and attitudes that win us affection often come to define what we understand as love.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 48)
“Three standout qualities [that a healthy relationship can be built on] are: humility, being open to feedback, and being in touch with their emotions. Humility is necessary because without it, growth is not possible. Being open to feedback is valuable because through mutual honesty you create a safe and vibrant home together. Being in touch with your emotions is needed because you need to know/accept yourself deeply to be able to love your partner well.”
Yung Pueblo
