#marriage

"To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up."

"It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability."

"I’ve never been the one. Not for anybody.”He closed the distance between them. “You’ll get used to it.” He tipped her face up to his, kissed her.“Why? Why am I the one?”“Because my life opened up, and it flooded with color when you walked back into it."

"When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, "What was it that you wanted and why didn't you fight for it?"

"'Safe Harbor' is a state of mind... it's the place - in reality or metaphor - to which one goes in times of trouble or worry. It can be a friendship, marriage, church, garden, beach, poem, prayer, or song."

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. The art of reading between the lines is a life long quest of the wise."

"Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do."

"Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship."

"Finding a life partner is like choosing a bed. You need one as a friend either in times of health or sickness. Freshness or weariness. Happiness or sadness. And we can be certain that we've picked the right one without having to sleep with it first."

"Women may fall when there's no strength in men.Act II"

"Unless I understand the Cross, I cannot understand why my commitment to what is right must be precedence over what I prefer."

"Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection."

"Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it."

"Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work."

"Find a woman who makes you feel more alive. She won't make life perfect but she'll make it infinitely more interesting. And then love her with all that's in you."

"There are no coincidences in life. What person that wandered in and out of your life was there for some purpose, even if they caused you harm. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense the short periods of time we get with people, or the outcomes from their choices. However, if you turn it over to God he promises that you will see the big picture in the hereafter. Nothing is too small to be a mistake."

"Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly."

"Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?"

"When in a relationship, a real man doesn't make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman."

"As you get older; you've probably noticed that you tend to forget things. You'll be talking with somebody at a party, and you'll know that you know this person, but no matter how hard you try, you can't remember his or her name. This can be very embarassing, especially if he or she turns out to be your spouse."