Sharon Pope > Quotes

“Not even trying is what we in the coaching world call failing in advance. But failing in advance is still a form of failing. I would argue that it’s worse than trying and not getting the result you desire, because then at least you know you tried and did your best. We do all of this just to avoid the emotions we would feel if we tried to make our marriage feel good again and it didn’t work. Seems silly, right?”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Our brains make us incredibly efficient in our lives. That’s the brain’s job and it does it beautifully most of the time. Unless, of course, we’re attempting to create change in our lives and our relationships. Change isn’t efficient. Your brain wants you to do the things the same way you’ve always done them – because that’s what’s efficient. But if you keep doing the same thing, you – for certain – will get the same result.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Without that awareness and self-acceptance, we inevitably hide parts of ourselves that we don’t fully accept and therefore, don’t want to share with another. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest deterrents to intimacy in our relationships today.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“The exact people who can teach us what we need to learn show up at the perfect time.”
― Sharon Pope, Soulful Truth Telling: Disbelieving The Lies That Keep Us From The Love We Desire

“For instance, growing up, I learned that you don’t talk about things that are ugly in your life. You don’t talk about your fears, your failures, or your insecurities. You don’t talk about the big, hard curveballs that life throws at you, and the mistakes we all make in the process. You don’t talk about the ugly that life can bring and the ugly emotions that appear. And when we have to hide those pieces of ourselves, all we’re left with is a big pile of shame (that we also need to hide).”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“We think love should feel effortless, but that’s a fairy tale. Then we get married and find out that love is hard work until death do us part, but that feels like a prison sentence. What I want to offer is the awareness and understanding that there are tools available to you to help you create the kind of relationships that feel good to your soul, if you’re willing to try with an open and loving heart. And if you genuinely apply the tools I’m going to teach you in this book, and the marriage still doesn’t feel good, then you can walk away knowing you truly did everything you could before making the painful decision to leave. That’s how you can either fix your marriage or move forward without regret and years of second-guessing.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“The lizard part of your brain is where the fight or flight mechanism lives. It’s the part of your brain that is responsible for keeping you safe and alive. That’s its job. I so appreciate that effort. Safe? Check. Alive? Check. Happy? Totally and completely irrelevant to the lizard brain. The lizard brain is not responsible for helping you make decisions that will make you feel happy. To the contrary, it wants to keep you safe, which is many times the opposite of happy. Opening your heart and falling in love can get you hurt: Let’s not do that.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” ~ Pëma Chodron”
― Sharon Pope, Soulful Truth Telling: Disbelieving The Lies That Keep Us From The Love We Desire

“make the relationship better, but as we perpetuate the same arguments, the resentments increase, as does the distance between us. When our relationship finally gets our attention, unfortunately it’s at the point where it has become really painful – when the heartbreak is both wide and deep, or there’s an affair, or there are words said or actions taken that can’t be undone, or one of you moves out of the family home. Your relationship has your attention but you fear it may be too far gone to ever repair.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“if you’ve never expressed your needs, desires, or preferences – do they really know you? Even if they love you, do they really know the person they think they love, or do they know and love the woman who has no needs or preferences of her own?”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“We are all designed to live through something and that thing was designed to change us.” ~ Donald Miller”
― Sharon Pope, Soulful Truth Telling: Disbelieving The Lies That Keep Us From The Love We Desire

“Our lizard minds (when they’re not kept on a leash) can take us to some dark places very quickly. Maybe the thoughts below sound familiar: He’ll never change. This is all there is. If I leave, what will people think? I’ll be judged. I’ll lose friendships…and people I love. Where will I live? Will I have enough money? Will I be able to do it on my own? What if I never meet anyone and I’m alone forever? Maybe this is better than being alone.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Many people think he is incompetent, arrogant, and narcissistic. They think he’s the worst president we’ve ever had in the history of our country. While still others (most of my family, frankly) have the perspective that he’s strong, determined, and a great leader. They think he’s exactly what the country needs most right now. Who’s right? What if neither are right? What if neither are wrong? What if everyone got to have their own thoughts and we didn’t have to agree? Imagine what this one teaching alone could do to your marriage. You and your partner can have different perspectives regarding the same circumstance and neither of you have to be wrong. You don’t have to agree, but what you do need is have respect for one another’s perspectives, without needing it to be the same as your own. When you stop trying to be right, you’re not actively trying to make your partner wrong. From that place there’s freedom, love, and respect inside the relationship that didn’t exist before when you believed your thoughts as absolute, unequivocal truth. And the best news of all is that no one can think for you and no one can force you to think or believe anything you don’t want to think or believe. You get to create your own thoughts, your own perspectives. You do. So does your husband. Don’t fight it. That’s like arguing with reality and you will always lose that argument – 100% of the time. Embrace it. Become conscious about it. You get to choose how you want to think about any circumstance. For emphasis, I’ll say that again: You get to choose how you want to think about any circumstance. Just think about how powerful that is. Now let everyone else off the hook from needing to have the same perspective.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Sometimes we have quiet doubts leading up to the wedding that we never gave ourselves permission to voice. Or we did voice the concerns, and someone talked us out of them. Still, there was a hopefulness that things would work out and somehow be fine. We let internal – or external – dialogue speak louder than the quiet questioning in our souls.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“But love alone without any real investment or attention causes a slow, steady deterioration of our connection to one another. And because it happens so gradually over the course of years or decades, the disconnection that occurs often goes unnoticed until the gap between the two of you feels almost too far to bridge.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“If we don’t keep that lizard on a leash, our minds will very quickly have us living under a bridge with no health insurance, all alone, and ignored by our kids. None of that is actually true, nor has it likely ever been true. But it feels like it could be true and that will scare us into remaining paralyzed and not taking steps in any direction. So we never try to make the relationship better, but we never leave either.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lives our growth and our freedom.” – Victor Frankl”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Because it’s trying to keep you safe, your lizard brain would prefer that you don’t try to improve your marriage, that you don’t reach for more, that you don’t give life to the desires in your heart that have been whispering to you for a long, long time. After all, if you don’t try, then you won’t ever fail. And if you never fail, then you’ll never feel the shame or negative emotion associated with failing.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“Once you realize that those fearful thoughts are just that, thoughts, and that you get to choose whether or not to indulge them, you begin to feel more authority over your own life. Once you realize that everything you think isn’t really Truth (with a capital T) and that you get to choose what you want to think and believe, you become very powerful in your own life. You actually get behind the wheel of your own bus so you can go to the places you want to go.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“could question the belief that if it’s ugly don’t talk about it; put on a mask and just make it look good. And when I looked closely at that belief system and saw how it was keeping me hidden, small, and frankly very lonely, I was able to change it and do so with compassion. I don’t have to make anyone else wrong. I don’t have the change the entire family and how they choose to live and breathe in their own lives. No one has to be wrong or ridiculed. But I do have to live and breathe what is true for me and do so as an aware, emotionally-mature woman who takes responsibility for my choices.”
― Sharon Pope, When Marriage Needs an Answer: The Decision to Fix Your Struggling Marriage or Leave Without Regret

“there’s very little passion in taking the safe approach.”
― Sharon Pope, Soulful Truth Telling: Disbelieving The Lies That Keep Us From The Love We Desire