Quotes about Relationship

Eventually, if there isn't deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

My criticism is worse than the conduct I want to correct. My ability to positively impact the situation withers and dies. If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control—myself. I can stop trying to shape up my wife and work on my own weaknesses. I can focus on being a great marriage partner, a source of unconditional love and support. Hopefully, my wife will feel the power of proactive example and respond in kind.

probably know someone whose energy is devoted to justifying his or her position in an ongoing negative relationship. If you look, you can sometimes see beyond behavior into the center that creates it.

When two people in a marriage are more concerned about getting the golden eggs, the benefits, than they are in preserving the relationship that makes them possible, they often become insensitive and inconsiderate, reflecting the little kindnesses and courtesies so important to a deep relationship. They begin to use control leavers to manipulate each other, to focus on their own needs, to justify their own position and look for evidence to show the wrongness of the other person

But is it possible that under that apparently disloyal behavior, these employees question whether I really act in their best interest? Do they feel like I'm treating them as mechanical objects? Is there some truth to that?

At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, "Stephen, I like what you're saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I'm really worried. My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can I do?" "The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked.

An agreement means very little in letter without the character and relationship base to sustain it in spirit.

In the great literature of all progressive societies, love is a verb.

But borrowing strength builds weakness. It builds weakness in the borrower because it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things done. It builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce, stunting the development of independent reasoning, growth, and internal discipline. And finally, it builds weakness in the relationship. Fear replaces cooperation, and both people involved become more arbitrary and defensive.

you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent.

If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we become highly dependent upon that relationship.

The real beginning of influence comes as others sense you are being influenced by them—when they feel understood by you—that you have listened deeply and sincerely, and that you are open.