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How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

Book by David Richo · 26 quotes · Love, Fear, Grief

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How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving Quotes

“A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.”

“In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm us, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away or as their wreckage is cleared away. We can trust that we will survive.”

“At every stage of life, our inner self requires the nurturance of loving people attuned to our feelings and responsive to our needs who can foster our inner resources of personal power, lovability, and serenity. Those who love us understand us and are available to us with an attention, appreciation, acceptance, and affection we can feel. They make room for us to be who we are.”

“Mindfulness is an ancient meditation mode in which we let go of our fears, our attachments to control and being right, our expectations and entitlements, and our judgments of others. Instead of these popular strategies, we learn to simply stay present opening in the moment - with nothing in the way - so we can experience life as it occurs.”

“Once we make our relationship choices in an adult way, a prospective partner who is unavailable, nonreciprocal, or not open to processing feelings and issues, becomes, by those very facts, unappealing. Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.”

“A person with self-trust knows that a healthy relationship is not based on absolute trust in anyone else. No one is trustworthy all the time. Adult relationships are based on acceptance of that given of human fallibility, not on rigid trust but flexible, unconditional love that allows us to get angry about betrayal but then leaves us enough heart to forgive it when a partner apologizes, makes amends, and truly changes.”

“We do not allow others to control us, but we do understand and feel their pain when we realize that their controlling manner is a compulsion. Most controlling people cannot help themselves; they are not in control of the controlling. They are not insulting us by trying to control us; rather, they automatically take charge and dominate people and situations. They do this because of a chilling fear that they cannot handle letting the chips fall where they may. It takes a spiritual program to be liberated from the compulsion to be controlling - and to become compassionate toward controlling people.”

“There is a connection between freedom and self-confidence: When you are kept from expressing your deepest needs and wishes, you lose trust in their validity and in your own judgement. You survive by finding out the rules and following them, thus hiding what you really want. You make it your purpose in life to please others rather than to affirm yourself.”