I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repe...
We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, unti...
In a way, underdevelopment is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil and sun-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living. When the capitalists from the d...
I recently consulted to a therapist who felt he had accomplished something by getting his dissociative client to remain in her ANP throughout her sessions with him. His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with...
Like Jocelyn, Survivors often think: * That’s just the way I am * I’m not lovable, that’s why I keep having disastrous relationships * I’m not very clever, that’s why I didn’t do well at school * I’m a loner * I’m a weak person * I’...
When God makes a covenant with us, God says: 'I will love you with an everlasting love. I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me.' In our society we don’t speak much about covenants; we speak about contract...
But I know I didn't love school for school's sake. I had never really been what people call an 'academic' person, nor did I see myself becoming one. Instead, I took pleasure in the fact that my work existed in a social setting, one that was based on ...
Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned. His own happiness is man’s only moral purpose, but only his own virtue can achieve it…Life is the reward of virtue- and...
Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant m...
What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear ...
Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resistance, retreat. Having himself no particular opinion...
It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncert...
One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple—children are made to feel that they must "give themselves...
This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility ...
When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotte...
Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness. A slim lad...
He glanced over at me. 'Scared? Of Reggie? What, she thinks he might force her to give up caffeine for real or something?' 'No,' I said. 'Of what, then?' he asked. I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home....
She was sewing together the little proofs of his devotion out of which to make a garment for her tattered love and faith. He cut into the faith with negligent scissors, and she mended and sewed and rewove and patched. He wasted, and threw away, and c...
I begin to learn there are certain things I shouldn't tell her. Like when we meet boys at Dorrian's and I give mine a blow job, or the time I messed around with a boy in the back near the bathrooms. Amy wants to be intimate with boys too, but to her ...
There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, and then all at once it gets awkward. All at once, she sees you looking at her, and then she doesn't want to joke around with you anymore, because she doesn't want to seem flirty...
Where it Matters Being with you today is worth all the broken hearts of yesterday. In a flash, all of the stumbling blocks of relationships gone wrong have become the stepping stones to our perfect love. We fit. I now understand the feeling I used to...
