Erika

“Our requests to our lovers might sound as follows: I need you to accept—often and readily—the possibility that you might be at fault, without this feeling to you like the end of the world. You have to allow that I can have a legitimate criticism and still love you. I need you to be undefensive. I need you to own up to what you are embarrassed or awkward about in yourself. I need you to know how to access the younger parts of you without terror. I need you to be able to be vulnerable around me. I need you to respond warmly, gently, and compassionately to the fragile parts of who I am; to listen to, and understand, my sorrows. We need a union of mutual tenderness. I need you to have a complex, nuanced picture of me and to understand the emotional burdens I’m carrying, even though I wish I weren’t, from the past. You have to see me with something like the generosity associated with therapy. I need you to regularly air your disappointments and irritations with me—and for me to do the same with you—so that the currents of affection between us can remain warm and our capacity for admiration intense. If these five critical demands have been met, we will feel loved and essentially satisfied whatever differences then crop up in a hundred other areas. Perhaps our partner’s friends or routines won’t be a delight, but we will be content. Just as if we lack these emotional goods, and yet agree on every detail of European literature, interior design, and social existence, we are still likely to feel lonely and bereft. By limiting what we expect a relationship to be about, we can overcome the tyranny and bad temper that bedevil so many lovers. A good, simpler—yet very fulfilling—relationship could end up in a minimal state. We might not socialize much together. We might hardly ever encounter each other’s families. Our finances might overlap only at a few points. We could be living in different places and only meet up twice a week. Conceivably we might not even ask too many questions about each other’s sex life. But when we do come together it would be profoundly gratifying, because we would be in the presence of someone who knew how to be kind, vulnerable, and understanding. A bond between two people can be deep and important precisely because it is not played out across all practical details of existence. By simplifying and clarifying what a relationship is for, we release ourselves from overly complicated conflicts and can focus on making sure our urgent underlying needs are sympathized with, seen, and understood.”
― Alain de Botton, A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life

“Women, he sneered, what are they good for? Laundry and fucking. Ramsay wondered if Gerrit had actually met Nellie. His mother seemed good for neither of those activities, but then Nellie wasn’t really a woman, she was an element, like iron.”
― Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

“It hadn’t felt sacrificial at the time. Devoting herself to motherhood and the domesticity that came with it had made her happy, at first. And Chloe does make Blair happy. Immeasurably. It is everything else that has happened along with Chloe, the changes in herself and her worth and her marriage that happened so slowly they were imperceptible. Where she’d once felt motherhood had given her so much more than she’d had before, now she could only see it as having taken everything away. Now she cannot reconcile the love she has for her daughter with how confined she feels by the privilege of being her mother.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Whispers

“Honesty is a love-preserving mechanism that keeps alive all that is impressive and delightful about our partner in our eyes. By regularly voicing our small sorrows and minor irritations, we are scraping the barnacles off the keel of our relationship and thereby ensuring that we will sail on with continued joy and admiration into an authentic and unresentful future. 2 Love and Psychotherapy Lovers and psychotherapists might, at first glance, seem to”
― Alain de Botton, A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life