Relationship

"The inner life is lived in a strange enough world; for in truth each man and woman dwells in a different environment—so different that I believe that there are not two people who have so much as half of it in common. Men know each others inner world so slightly that they neglect this difference, and it is only when two people have a relation of utter love and trust that their inner lives begin to become perceptible to each other and are revealed as mutually most strange."

"In a relational culture of cynicism and despair, churches can provide hope and help in living the vocations of marriage and family life that most of us are called to. The best dating app can only start relationships. Churches can nurture and sustain them."

"In a relationship, if there arent equal rights to agree and disagree, it wont lead anywhere, and I dont want to be bound in a relationship that goes nowhere."

"If someone wishes to alter a relationship, they must discuss it with the other person, negotiate the change, and listen to the other person’s account. There is no ethical way around it."

"Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less."

"Even walking side by side for a long time, some relationships never touch the heart."

"In the mixing and matching of two largely unknowable histories (of genetic endowment and personal experience), the only sane foregone conclusion about any relationship is that it is an experiment; and that exactly what it is an experiment in will never be clear to the participants."

"Freedom lovers must learn to tune in to the underlying truth of the power of personal relationships. But we must do so with intentions of goodwill when reaching out to others who don’t share our views. And we must express our true beliefs without the self-censorship that political correctness demands. …So be a real friend to others, not an “influencer” who seeks to exploit people under the guise of friendship to push for a collectivist agenda. Keep your eyes peeled for signs of “changemakers” who pretend to come to “depolarize,” but are really seeking to colonize your town and your mind."

"... many of us will have managed to drink alcohol, even drink too much alcohol, for much of our lives without waking up in a police cell or becoming suicidal. And although we may, occasionally, have made idiots of ourselves, there may have been more positive consequences, too: who knows what proportion of long-term relationships in Britain began under the influence of booze? I’d guess a majority."

"Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?"

"Individuals primarily seek social relationships to fulfill their need for belonging (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Lee and Robbins 1998). Human beings are social animals and because ‘no man (woman) is an island’ (Donne 1975), people are naturally inclined to make social connections to satisfy their need for belonging (Maslow 1954; Brewer 2005). Baumeister and Leary (1995) described belonging, the need to form and maintain interpersonal bonds, as one of the fundamental motivations behind human behavior. Most research indicates a common definition of what loneliness is – it is an aversive psychological state due to a person’s perception of lacking satisfactory social relationships. Quantity of social relationship is a contributing factor to lonely feeling: people will feel ‘lonely’ when there are too few people around them (Russell, Peplau and Cutrona 1980), as opposed to the ‘crowded’ feeling when individuals are surrounded by too many people. However, quality may be more important than quantity at times. As the sufficient number of relationships varies among individuals (Jones 1982), loneliness has also been understood as the perception that one’s existing interpersonal relationships do not meet one’s expectations (Weiss 1973; Gordon 1976; Peplau and Caldwell 1978; 4266 L.W. Lam and D.C. Lau Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 00:54 22 September 2012 Newcomb 1990; Green, Richardson, Lago and Schatten-Jones 2001). Other scholars describe loneliness as painful feelings and emotional distress due to insufficient or unsatisfactory social connections or relationships (Rook 1984; Cacioppo et al. 2006; Cacioppo and Patrick 2008; Rotenberg et al. 2010)."