You’ve got to tell your partner what they are. But in doing so you can’t seem as though you’re threatening. It’s got to come across as a factual statement about what’s real for you. You’ve got to follow through. A bottom line

Before this you felt uncomfortable and maybe there were things about your partner you didn’t like, but then that one incident comes along and highlights who he really is and how you really feel about him.

“When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as is one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists.” What does it mean to say that someone else’s

You remember I talked about mutual shutdown: where no one will give anything until the other gives something. The “benefit” of that is that you don’t have to do anything. Perfect for people who want to hold their ambivalence over

living in the country and building their own house, growing their own food, and supporting themselves by the sweat of their brows, all in the context of being part of a close-knit community.

person who takes things off the table is basically saying that your getting naked—by showing the issues that are important to you and showing your need to resolve them—makes him unsafe. So he tries, consciously or unconsciously, to make you unsafe by not letting you talk about it.

And anything a person does can be a unilateral move, including pressuring you into having sex or insisting you talk about something you don’t want to talk about or showing up unannounced with a friend or relative for dinner or accepting a promotion at work that involves massive new responsibilities that you don’t even know

if instead I’d compared my reality to the real alternative that was waiting for me, I wouldn’t have left. My life with Wendy was far from perfect, but there was nothing about it that meant I couldn’t stay or that I wouldn’t have been happy staying and working things out.”

Bernie was a bit disappointed with how his dream had turned out. But this is crucial: he wasn’t disappointed that he’d followed his dream. He was proud of himself. He enjoyed the actual work he did every day. He hadn’t wanted the relationship with Sandy to end, not if he could have kept the relationship and kept his new life, too. But forced to cho