VIDEO

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Signs You’re Afraid of Intimacy

2018

04:07 min

FindCenter Quotes ImageWe 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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FindCenter Quotes ImageThe 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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FindCenter Quotes ImageIf 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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FindCenter Quotes ImageWhen 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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FindCenter Quotes ImagePeople’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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FindCenter Quotes ImageIntimate 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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FindCenter Quotes ImageAvoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageThe 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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FindCenter Quotes ImageQuestioning ourselves for being ‘oversensitive’ is a common way that women, in particular, disqualify our legitimate anger and hurt. . . . The fact that some of us feel more vulnerable than others in a particular context does not mean we are weak or lesser in any way.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageAnger 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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EXPLORE TOPIC

Intimacy