Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.
I don't believe [monogamy] is realistic. But, I believe that we, as people, have the power to make it happen.
Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.
You cannot be in love with love.
I think once you enter the dating world and you realise it's nothing like those Disney movies you watched when you were a little girl, you just become more guarded.
Ruth and I don't have a perfect marriage, but we have a great one. How can I say two things that seem so contradictory? In a perfect marriage, everything is always the finest and best imaginable; like a Greek statue, the proportions are exact and the finish is unblemished. Who knows any human being lke that? For a marriage couple to expect perfection in each other is unrealistic.
I think the way you prevent your man from cheating on you is to just have a good understanding about who he is first. If you know that the guy you're with is a player and he's already kind of living the life, you know what you're getting yourself into. You have to be real with yourself.
What does it mean to have a healthy relationship? It's such a strangely clinical way of talking about interpersonal dynamics, like you can do a white blood cell count and say, 'No, it's not looking good for that one.' It's impossible to have a loving relationship in which you never cause pain and no pain ever is caused to you.
The honeymoon is not actually over until we cease to stifle our sighs and begin to stifle our yawns.
In all human love it must be realized that every man promises a woman, and every woman promises a man that which only God alone can give, namely, perfect happiness. One of the reasons why so many marriages are shipwrecked is because as the young couple leave the altar, they fail to realize that human feelings tire and the enthusiasm of the honeymoon is not the same as the more solid happiness of enduring human love. One of the greatest trials of marriage is the absence of solitude. In the first moments of human love, one does not see the little hidden deformities which later on appear.
And, there are negatives and positives to it. Like, you know, just like a marriage, where you're like, "Well, this... you know, is the sex still as exciting as it was two years ago?"
The older you get the more realistic it is that you're significant other is your significant other. I mean, you'll always have your girlfriends or your guy friends, but the person you're married to is usually your No. 1.
I always feel stupid giving advice since I've been married, what, a year? I can say this: Be in it for the long haul and just know there are going to be rough patches. No two people are the same, there are going to be areas where you just don't click.
I approach love differently now that I know it's hard for it to work out.
A relationship isn't something that has to be created in a day or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. It's something that'll always be just a little flawed.
Choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates.
A good marriage is not one where perfection reigns: it is a relationship where a healthy perspective overlooks a multitude of "unresolvables."
I think it's important for people to know that there's no such thing as a perfect relationship, you know?
Romances paint at full length people's wooing. But only give a bust of marriages.
I think sometimes we look at other people's marriages and we think they must always be so happy together. I don't know anybody who's married for a long time who hasn't somehow made room in their love story for the hate and resentment that they sometimes feel toward each other.
Except even at the start, when we were in that can't-get-enough-of-you-phase, there was like some invisible wall between us. At first I tried to take it down, but it took so much effort to even make cracks. And then I got tired of trying. Then I justified it. This was just how adult relationships were, how love felt once you had a few battle scars.
It's true that romance novels do detail the courtship phase of a relationship. We usually write 'And they lived happily ever after' before our heroine starts snoring or our hero starts tossing his socks over the hamper.
Marriage is not super-important to me - most end in divorce. I love the idea of being with someone forever, but I don't think it happens very often.
It takes a big man and a big woman to actually say, like, 'Okay, I'm in love with you, but I can't keep forcing it - it's only pushing us apart'.
