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Finding Love (and Marriage) as a Single Mom

By Marie Hartwell-Walker — 2016

If you’re a single mother who has fallen in love, make sure you know what your sweetheart is prepared to do about becoming part of a family before you start dreaming of tying the knot

Read on psychcentral.com

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We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.

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Harriet Lerner
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The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.

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Harriet Lerner
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If only our passion to understand others were as great as our passion to be understood. Were this so, all our apologies would be truly meaningful and healing.

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Harriet Lerner
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When forgiveness experts talk in binary language (’You either forgive the wrongdoer or you are a prisoner of your own anger and hate’), they are collapsing the messy complexity of human emotions into a simplistic dichotomous equation.

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Harriet Lerner
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People’s sense of self-worth is pivotal to their ability to look clearly at the hurt they’ve caused. The more solid one’s sense of self regard, the more likely that that person can feel empathy and compassion for the hurt party, and apologize from an authentic center.

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Harriet Lerner
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Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships.

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Harriet Lerner
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The best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication.

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Harriet Lerner
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Anger is inevitable when our lives consist of giving in and going along; when we assume responsibility for other people’s feelings and reactions; when we relinquish our primary responsibility to proceed with our own growth and ensure the quality of our own lives; when we behave as if having a...

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Harriet Lerner
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Feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur.

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Harriet Lerner
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don’t want to.

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Harriet Lerner
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Motherhood