Alexandra H. Solomon > Quotes

“It’s vital to learn to stay with your emotions, even the strong or painful ones. Emotions demand attention, not action. Hold steady. Observe. Breathe.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Love Every Day: 365 Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationship Heal, Grow, and Thrive

“Research shows that couples therapists rank a lack of love to be the most difficult problem to treat—more difficult even than addiction or infidelity”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“When your partner raises a concern with you about you, the process goes much better if you remember that attending to this concern is not the same thing as agreeing with this concern. Rather than closing yourself off by defending or rationalizing, you can remain open to your partner.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Love Every Day: 365 Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationship Heal, Grow, and Thrive

“The happiest couples I know are the ones who are able to create and inhabit love stories that are good enough. Not perfect: good enough.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Family dysfunction is like fire in the woods that rolls generation to generation taking everything in its path until one person has the courage to face the flame. That person brings peace to her ancestors and spares those who follow.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“A butterfly outgrows her cocoon. This doesn’t mean the cocoon was fake, meaningless, or not worth it. It means the cocoon served its purpose.

In the same way, you will outgrow a job, home, friendship, relationship.

Can you say goodbye without belittling the place that experience holds in your heart? In your life? In your transformation?”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Love Every Day: 365 Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationship Heal, Grow, and Thrive

“What you do have control over is how you respond when your intimate relationship invites you into deep, close contact with your tender spots.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“When the desire for connection competes with the desire for autonomy, we can end up feeling lost and anxious, asking questions like: How do I balance wanting to be in a relationship with wanting to have “my own life?”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“If you remind yourself how good it feels to be liked, perhaps it will be easier to let someone know you like them. There’s a kindness —a generosity of sorts—in letting someone know you think they are pretty amazing. Drop the story that liking someone puts you in the weaker position.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon

“feel connected to each other and separate from each other. Boundaries are unhealthy when they are too porous or too rigid.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“How can I know when I have become lost from myself? How can I find my way back to a place that is authentic and whole?”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“We can listen to the echoes of a pain we didn’t cause.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Love Every Day: 365 Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationship Heal, Grow, and Thrive

“In that place of brave love, both partners are committed to a “relationship of constancy,” as M. Scott Peck calls it, showing up again and again for the relationship because it feels worthwhile and because you promised you would. People in this chapter of love enjoy the benefits of security but may also struggle to maintain a passionate connection.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Perhaps she is afraid of being judged harshly, so she judges others first.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“You don’t have to know whether he or she is your soulmate by the second date! What matters is whether this person is a worthy travel companion—someone with whom you can build that “relationship of constancy.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“In what ways am I being held back by beliefs and stories that do not serve me?”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“As therapists often say, “The way out is through.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Showing up means being present and taking full responsibility for ourselves.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Our culture sends us messages about who and when and how to love—messages that shape how we feel within our skin, how we make choices about intimate relationships, and how we feel about those choices.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Become aware and make a choice.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Understanding the stories you carry about love”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Self-awareness means knowledge of your own history, character, feelings, motives, and desires. This book is about relational self-awareness: understanding in a deep and heartfelt way how you “show up” for love.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Valuing individualism can make us feel squeamish about the fact that falling in love means becoming dependent on another person—emotionally, pragmatically, and financially.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Accepting that there are no quick fixes or easy answers”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Core issues can also be created by elements of your cultural identity intersecting with your life experiences.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“according to Gilbert, soulmate relationships are vital and time limited. No “till death do us part” here! A soulmate relationship creates a crisis and a crucible for transformation, allowing us to experience, in the next relationship, a more conscious love.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“Committing to the ongoing practice of relational self-awareness”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“The goal isn’t to escape our cultural context. Because consciousness facilitates choice, the goal instead is to decide whether a particular cultural message limits us or supports us.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want

“That self- critical part of me holds the power to move me from disappointment to shame:

• When he offers help, I push it away—after all, it’s my fault.
• When he offers empathy, my ears distort it and hear pity.
• When he shares his disappointment, I get defensive.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Love Every Day: 365 Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationship Heal, Grow, and Thrive

“Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it in a mean way. When we are able to align what we feel on the inside with the words we speak to ourselves and to others, we can create and maintain healthy boundaries.”
― Alexandra H. Solomon, Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Find and Keep the Love You Want