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Quote by Diane Vaughan

“We all are secret-keepers in our intimate relationships. We keep secrets from our partners about daily encounters, former lovers, true feelings about sex, friends, in-laws, finances, personal hopes, and worries about work, health, love, and life. It may be, in fact, that keeping these secrets makes all relationships possible. If our partners knew every thought, every nuance of our selves, our relationships would run the risk of succumbing from either constant turmoil or—perhaps worse—a tedious matter-of-factness devoid of surprises. Whatever their contribution to the maintenance of our unions, secrets also contribute to their collapse.”

Quote by Diane Vaughan

Book:Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships
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Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships

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Diane Vaughan

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“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”

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Book:The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
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“Uncoupling is primarily a tale of two transitions: one that begins before the other. Most often, one person wants out while the other person wants the relationship to continue. Although both partners must go through all the same stages of the transition in order to uncouple, the transition begins and ends at different times for each. By the time the still-loving partner realizes the relationship is in serious trouble, the other person is already gone in a number of ways. The rejected partner then embarks on a transition that the other person began long before.”

RelationshipsUncoupling
Book:Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships
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