Mute Relationship Quotes

Tell me where the swans go in the winter I need to know if the mute ones can sing. Tell me why stars fall from the sky I need to know if it is luck they bring. Tell me why feathers land near you I need to know if you've injured your wing. Now, tell me where you end, my angel For I no longer know where I begin.

If I was blind, I would still see you. If I was deaf, I would still hear you. If I was mute, I would still speak to you. If I was crippled, I would still carry you. If I was dying, I would still live for you.

I am sitting down to write in a state of some confusion; I have been reading a lot of different things that are merging into one another, and if one hopes to find a solution for oneself by this kind of reading, one is mistaken; one comes up against a wall, and cannot proceed. Your life is so very different, dearest. Except in relation to your fellow men, have you ever known uncertainty? Have you ever observed how, within yourself and independent of other people, diverse possibilities open up in several directions, thereby actually creating a ban on your every movement? Have you ever, without giving the slightest thought to anyone else, been in despair simply about yourself? Desperate enough to throw yourself on the ground and remain there beyond the Day of Judgment? How devout are you? You go to the synagogue; but I dare say you have not been recently. And what is it that sustains you, the idea of Judaism or of God? Are you aware, and this is the most important thing, of a continuous relationship between yourself and a reassuringly distant, if possibly infinite height or depth? He who feels this continuously has no need to roam about like a lost dog, mutely gazing around with imploring eyes; he never need yearn to slip into a grave as if it were a warm sleeping bag and life a cold winter night; and when climbing the stairs to his office he never need imagine that he is careering down the well of the staircase, flickering in the uncertain light, twisting from the speed of his fall, shaking his head with impatience. There are times, dearest, when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

Though love may be blind, it sees much; though it may be deaf, it hears much; though it may be mute, it says much; and though it may be lame, it does much.

Sweet conversation is good for the heart and and a good pill for forgetting bitter and wasteful thoughts; for a moment, it mutes so many bad thoughts and it keeps the heart calm

There are many paths to a fairytale ending... Blocking, unfollowing, muting, and unfriending also lead to "Happily ever after.

The idea that language is a game at which some players are more skilled than others has a bearing on the vexed relationship between loneliness and speech. Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others. They undermine our footing in the social, casting us as outsiders, poor or non-participants.

We’re exploring and creating our relationship, Without any promises of being in Love, We were mutely changing every day for each other; To become Greater Together.

Are you falling asleep before midnight?" Cassie leaned over the edge of the couch to look at Jack. He was stretched out on the floor, his head resting against a pillow near the center of the couch, his eyes closed. She was now wide awake and headache free. He wasn't in so good a shape. "The new year is eighteen minutes away." "Come kiss me awake in seventeen minutes." She blinked at that lazy suggestion, gave a quick grin, and dropped Benji on his chest. He opened one eye to look up at her as he settled his hand lightly on the kitten. "That's a no?" She smiled. She was looking forward to dating him, but she was smart enough to know he'd value more what he had to work at. He sighed. "That was a no. How much longer am I going to be on the fence with you?" "Is that a rhetorical question or do you want an answer?" If this was the right relationship God had for her future, time taken now would improve it, not hurt it. She was ready to admit she was tired of being alone. He scratched Benji under the chin and the kitten curled up on his chest and batted a paw at his hand. "Rhetorical. I'd hate to get my hopes up." She leaned her chin against her hand, looking down at him. "I like you, Jack." "You just figured that out?" "I'll like you more when you catch my mouse." "The only way we are going to catch T.J. is to turn this place into a cheese factory and help her get so fat and slow that she can no longer run and hide." Or you could move your left hand about three inches to the right right and catch her." Jack opened one eye and glanced toward his left. The white mouse was sitting motionless beside the plate he had set down earlier. "Let her have the cheeseburger. You put mustard on it." "You're horrible." He smiled. "I'm serious." "So am I." Jack leaned over, caught Cassie's foot, and tumbled her to the floor. "Oops." "That wasn't fair. You scared my mouse." Jack set the kitten on the floor. "Benji, go get her mouse." The kitten took off after it. "You're teaching her to be a mouser." "Working on it. Come here. You owe me a kiss for the new year." "Do I?" She reached over to the bowl of chocolates on the table and unwrapped a kiss. She popped the chocolate kiss into his mouth. "I called your bluff." He smiled and rubbed his hand across her forearm braced against his chest. "That will last me until next year." She glanced at the muted television. "That's two minutes away." "Two minutes to put this year behind us." He slid one arm behind his head, adjusting the pillow. She patted his chest with her hand. "That shouldn't take long." She felt him laugh. "It ended up being a very good year," she offered. "Next year will be even better." "Really? Promise?" "Absolutely." He reached behind her ear and a gold coin reappeared. "What do you think? Heads you say yes when I ask you out, tails you say no?" She grinned at the idea. "Are you cheating again?" She took the coin. "This one isn't edible," she realized, disappointed. And then she turned it over. "A real two-headed coin?" "A rare find." He smiled. "Like you." "That sounds like a bit of honey." "I'm good at being mushy." "Oh, really?" He glanced over her shoulder. "Turn up the TV. There's the countdown." She grabbed for the remote and hit the wrong button. The TV came on full volume just as the fireworks went off. Benji went racing past them spooked by the noise to dive under the collar of the jacket Jack had tossed on the floor. The white mouse scurried to run into the jacket sleeve. "Tell me I didn't see what I think I just did." "I won't tell you," Jack agreed, amused. He watched the jacket move and raised an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to rescue the kitten or the mouse?

Kenji goes suddenly still. At the creak of the door Kenji’s eyebrows shoot up; a soft click and his eyes widen; a muted rustle of movement and suddenly the barrel of a gun is pressed against the back of his head. Kenji stares at me, his lips making no sound as he mouths the word psychopath over and over again. The psychopath in question winks at me from where he’s standing, smiling like he couldn’t possibly be holding a gun to the head of our mutual friend. I manage to suppress a laugh. “Go on,” Warner says, still smiling. “Please tell me exactly how she’s failed you as a leader.” “Hey—“ Kenji’s arms fly up in mock surrender. “I never said she failed at anything, okay? And you are clearly over-react—“ Warner knocks Kenji on the side of the head with the weapon. “Idiot.” Kenji spins around. Yanks the gun out of Warner’s hand. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? I thought we were cool.” “We were,” Warner says icily. “Until you touched my hair.” “You asked me to give you a haircut—“ “I said nothing of the sort! I asked you to trim the edges!” “And that’s what I did.” “This,” Warner says, spinning around so I might inspect the damage, “is not trimming the edges, you incompetent moron—“ I gasp. The back of Warner’s head is a jagged mess of uneven hair; entire chunks have been buzzed off. Kenji cringes as he looks over his handiwork. Clears his throat. “Well,” he says, shoving his hand in his pockets. “I mean—whatever, man, beauty is subjective—“ Warner aims another gun at him. “Hey!” Kenji shouts. “I am not here for this abusive relationship, okay?” He points to Warner. “I did not sign up for this shit!” Warner glares at him and Kenji retreats, backing out of the room before Warner has another chance to react; and then, just as I let out a sign of relief, Kenji pops his head back into the doorway and says “I think the cut looks cute, actually” and Warner slams the door in his face.

So, when women universally complain about their slothfully mute boyfriends, we learn two things. First, women have a universal desire to enjoy receiving high levels of verbal courtship effort. Second, high levels of verbal courtship effort are so costly that men have evolved to produce them only when they are necessary for initiating or reviving sexual relationships.

Passion was the opposite of power. Passion was the forsaking of power. In passion, she had offered herself as a canvas for somebody else's pen, mutely receiving his designs on her skin. In passion, she had allowed herself to dream of a new name, adding his name to her own, chopping off a part of herself as an offering. In passion, she had cut herself up, lost herself, lost days, lost months.

God’s great aim has always been, and will forever be, relationship with us. Sometimes, He may deprive us of something in order to draw us to Someone. And when we reciprocate—when we decide that we want Him more than we want His stuff—the most amazing thing happens. We are rewired and our requests are either altered as we grow to know and to prefer what He wants for us, or they are simply answered because, in seeking first the kingdom of God, “all these things” are given to us as well (Matt 6:33).

Her time consisted of seeing him, waiting, and seeing him again, of presence, absence, presence. She watched him anxiously, muting her love, instinctively afraid of making him feel trapped or guilty. She touched him very carefully with superficial lingering touches as if to extract some essence, some strong salve, to keep her through those empty absence times. The world still came to her only through him. He became aware of a wrought-up intensity of suffering which she could not forbear occasionally to let him glimpse . . . Ducane at last decided that there was only one remedy, the brutal one of a complete parting.

Second driven nature I was always a mad drunken sailor. Once nature is denied, we were whispers over graveyards, operating on every level, more touched by destiny, left you a mess underneath higher poems, you tasted like mystery; and our role was to appreciate the relationship with the dying world you brought into calm waves, and her poems were stranger than I can suppose. Your hot pink mist rose, unrecognizable, and this world mutes the poetry waving through your pure hair, mathematics all in my mind deciding statements in your name. My eyes become the picture of life, not the shadow of my flesh your visible glance made drip endlessly against the golden California streets.

One of the problems, ironically, can be prayer. In prayer, we set our hopes high and call it faith. We pray for the perfect spouse, healthy children, successful careers, and serene families. We don’t just wish for these things but actually train ourselves to expect them! We fear the worst if we should ever lower our sights. Yet this is false faith. The apostle Paul longed not just “to know Christ . . . [and] the power of his resurrection,” but also “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10 NIV 1984). The Christian witness and our ultimate hope is not merely a miraculous succession of miraculous escapes from all human affliction. Rather it is the joy of a deepening relationship with the “man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isa. 53:3 NIV 1984) who loves us and lives in us. I’m not suggesting that we should pray for hard times but rather that when such times come, we should feel a little less outrage and a lot more hope because Jesus, who went through similar struggles, predicted that we would have them and promised to be with us in the midst of them.

This is how you lose her. You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger’s voice during a trip to the grocery store, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from when she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely. You must remember when she forgets. You lose her when you don’t notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you’re about to ask a question but you think anything you’re about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name on blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don’t even know about yourself, because she pays attention. She remembers when you forget. You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable. She wants to feel cherished. When you make her feel that you are fleeting. She wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate. She wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you, nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good. You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

You're practically pimping out your only daughter." I grinned when I heard the choking sound on the other end of the line. He'd been having his morning coffee... perfect timing. "He was supposed to sleep on the couch." Eddie didn't sound happy. "Was he? He said otherwise." I parked and hid my snickers by pressing the mute button. "You better be riling me up for the heck of it." I let the line go dead silent.

My dead father isn't talking to me. That he doesn't talk to me is odd, since every other spirit talks to me, they all do. But for some reason he's reticent, dumb, mute. No thoughts, no words, no sudden appearances to guide me, to give me direction or inspiration in my life and ways, good or bad. No words to explain why he was the asshole he was during his life, unavailable to me. He's fucking silent. Still." -- From "Spirits in the Night," included in Mitchell Waldman's forthcoming short story collection, BROTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHER STRANGERS.

The hugely influential “abstinence pledge” among young people in the United States has had muted success in changing the sexual behavior of young Christians.

You’ll want to take that last one out of contention,” Edoardo offered. “She never should have been in the pile.” “She in a relationship or something?” I asked. “No, she was in a car accident six months ago. Her mother was killed in the wreck, and Noemi’s vocal cords were damaged. She’s mute and, from what I hear, pretty traumatized. No clue why her father nominated her. She’s hardly been seen outside of her house since it happened.

Through the Fire by Raj Lowenstein Trafford Publishing reviewed by Anita Lock "Beware the Abomination." After initially treating Michael Braun for wounds resulting from a brutal attack, David and Kelly Hartman—a physician and nurse respectively, as well as a gay, married couple—feel that the best place for her (yes, a she despite the masculine name) to recover is at the condo of David's twin brother, Dan. Dan, an overworked detective, ignores David's frantic texts and is shocked when he wakes to find a stunningly beautiful but battered woman sleeping upstairs. Michael is also a mute who communicates through American Sign Language (ASL), a language in which Dan happens to be an expert. Although the two eventually fall in love, there is more to Michael's past that Dan is aware of until he receives information from none other than Michael's abuser. Raj Lowenstein presents a romantic thriller that appears more disturbingly real than fiction. Set largely in Texas, Lowenstein's plot has a bit of a Law and Order feel to it—minus the court and prison scenes. Laced with gender-related issues and replete with a tight cast, Lowenstein's storyline zeroes in on Dan and his unexpected romance with Michael amid peculiar situations. Lowenstein punctuates her thought-provoking, third-person narrative with the sinister and hideous presence of Catfish, whose persona is a paradox to say the least. Key to Lowenstein's writing style is the use of engaging dialogue to generate dynamic characters who are developing their relationships and facing life's challenges. Lowenstein aptly fashions her well-developed cast within cliff-hanging chapters that alternate between unanticipated character scenes. Scenes are filled with back stories, steamy romantic episodes, investigations, the evil machinations of Catfish, and are all used in the deliberate build-up to the novel's intense and unnerving apogee. Kudos to Lowenstein for creating an edgy and eye-opening debut! RECOMMENDED by the US Review

For her our row was long forgotten. It was just me who could be gruff and sullen for several weeks, just me who could nourish resentment for several years. Against no one else but her though. Linda was the only person I argued with, she was the only person I held grudges against. If my mother, my brother or my friends said something offensive, I let it go. Nothing of what they said touched me or mattered very much to me, not really. I assumed it was part of my life as an adult that I had succeeded in muting all the overtones and undertones of my character, which at first had been explosive, and I would therefore live the rest of my life in peace and tranquillity, and solve any cohabitation problems with irony, sarcasm and the sulky silence I had honed to perfection after the three lengthy relationships I’d had. But with Linda it was as though I had been cast back to the time when my feelings swung from wild elation to wild fury to the pits of despair and desperation, the time when I lived in a series of all-decisive moments, and the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable, and when nothing could give me any peace of mind except books, with their different places, different times and different people, where I was no one and no one was me. That was when I was young and had no options. Now I was thirty-five years old and wanted as few disturbances and as little mental agitation as possible, I should be able to have that, shouldn’t I, or at least be in a position to get it? Didn’t really look like it.

To try am fully, evil needs to victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned." 9 "in the Christian tradition, condemnation is an element of reconciliation, not an isolated independent judgment, even when reconciliation cannot be achi Pp ved. So we condemn most properly in the act of forgiving, and the act of separating the doer from the deed. That is how God in Christ condemned all wrongdoing." 15 "...unhealthy dreams and misdirected labors often become broken realities." 42 "...the story (of Christianity) frames what it means to remember rightly, and the God of this story makes remembering rightly possible." 44 "...peace can be honest and lasting only if it rests on the foundation of truth and justice." 56 "Seekers or truth, as distinct from alleged possessors of truth, will employ 'double vision'- they will give others the benefit of the doubt, they will inhabit imaginatively the world of others, and they will endeavor to view events in question from the perspective of others, not just their own." 57 "Those who love do not remember a persons evil deeds without also remembering her good deeds; they do not remember a person'a vices without also being mindful of their own failings. Thus the full story of wrongdoing becomes clear through the voice of love..."64 "...the highest aim of lovingly truthful memory seeks to bring about the repentance, forgiveness, and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims." 65 "And healing of the wrong without involving the wrong tour, therefore, can only be partial. To complete the healing, The relationship between the two needs to be mended. For Christians, this is what reconciliation is all about. Reconciliation with the wrongdoer completes the healing of the person who suffered the wrong. 84 Page 113: "Christ suffered in solidarity...what happened to him will also happen to him." "The dangers of this memory reside in its orientation not just to the past but also to the future." 113 "But let us beware that some accounts of what it means for Christ to have died on behalf of the ungodly...negates the notion of his involvement as a third party." 113 "Christian churches are communities that keep themselves alive- more precisely, that God keeps alive- by keeping alive the memories of the exodus and the passion." 126 "...but often they (churches) simply fail to incorporate right remembering of wrong suffered into the celebration of holy Communion. And even when they do incorporate such remembrance, they often keep it neatly sequestered from the memory of the passion. That memory becomes simply the story of what God has done for us wrongdoers or for a suffers, while remaining mute about how we ourselves remember the wrongs. With such stopping short, suffered wrongs are remembered only for God to comfort us in our pain and lend religious legitimacy to whatever uses we want to put those memories. No wonder we sometimes find revenge celebrating its victory under the mantle of religiously sanctioned struggle for the faith, for self protection, for national preservation, for our way of life- all in the name of God and accompanied by celebration of the self sacrificial love of Christ!" 127 "Communities of sacred memory are, at their best, schools of right remembering - remembering that is truthful and just, that heals individuals without injuring others, that allows the past to motivate a just struggle for justice and the grace-filled work of reconciliation." 128 Quoting Kierkegaard: "no part of life out to have so much meaning for a person that he cannot forget it at any moment he wants to; on the other hand, every single part of life ought to have so much meaning for a person that he can remember it at any moment." 166

She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother’s behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought.

we are born into this world on the tailcoats of a scream. born into gritted teeth and a shock of red across the pristine. born into a solemn hush. are you evil? you, who tore into this world on a steed of crimson… are you a monster? we are born as angels, toothless, a mouth a gurgling brook. and as we grow, so do our wings, until we are high enough to see that our church is no more than a small forest and the altar a tree. are you a monster, angel with fangs? all teeth, thick with teeth, you can’t even close your mouth anymore. it rains and it’s like drowning. corn husk skin and we’re born again. into a time of being tied down, to a person, to a bed. a time of clipped wings. of holy cries out to a void. your wildness a convenience store in the desert, pale pink, dusty, arid. your wildness staring longingly at the screaming horizon and flicking another cigarette butt into the dirt, a lone oscillating fan its only company. we’re born into this concrete world, where sanctuary is to be alone or to pretend to like it. this world of broken bottles instead of leaf crunch. roadside motels proclaiming vacancies. inside and out. that pluck your heartstrings. a new church, a fresh sin. the altar now a white railing against a muted matte pink wall. you lean against it, hips jutted to the side. some of the eighties still lingers. you see a man in a leather jacket kissing a girl’s neck purple. he looks up. teeth are everywhere. hundreds of glistening teeth. you turn away. your wings shush against an old telephone booth, door forced closed. you’re calling your mother to say you’re sorry for hurting her, but when she answers you hang up.

Teachers are our most intimate acquaintances for a period of our lives, but the relationship is tilted toward us; they mute themselves in order to act as a conduit for our growth.

Recollecting the treasured memories.... strengthens the shared meaning .... building a deeper emotional connection...it is a relational way of reminiscing the olden times...By opening them again with the other....it becomes a throwback to the forgotten past....but as you gather those times...it becomes a shared moment cuddling by the fire...for no longer are they memories frozen mutely in time...rather a melting past revived to savor a lifeless relationship....

Recollecting the treasured memories.... strengthens the shared meaning .... and builds deeper emotional connection...it is a relational way of reminiscing the olden memories...By opening them again with the other....it becomes a throwback to the forgotten past....but as you gather those times...it becomes a shared moment cuddling by the fire...for no longer are they memories frozen mutely in time...rather a melting past revived to savor a lifeless relationship....

Recollecting the treasured memories.... strengthens the shared meaning ....by building a deeper emotional connection...It is a relational way of reminiscing about the olden times...By opening them again with the other....it becomes a throwback to the forgotten past....but as you gather those times...it becomes a shared moment cuddling by the fire...for no longer are they memories frozen mutely in time...rather a melting past revived to savor a lifeless relationship....

Philosophically, contention can be seen as the dialectical unity of polar energies bringing together opposed forces that need to and must be reconciled if life is to continue. It is not something to be feared or avoided—people seeking balance and harmony must embrace the process of contention. The I Ching also teaches that contention is related to the concept of impermanence, that struggle is constant and that it is only the form of contention that changes over time…. How to fight against colonialism? There is, as one conceivable path, a well-established spectrum of contention that is rooted in the experience of peoples all over the world. Conflict is contention taken to its limit; war is conflict taken to the extreme—always considered as a last resort and and in just cause, but always the end result nonetheless. This idea of struggle, founded on the base power of violence, is in fact a cycle of futility. Feelings of pride rise and the people, who begin to assert themselves, raising voices in protest, causing disruption, eventually acting violently against injustice, causing inevitable counter-violence, spurring warfare, repression, and again, subjugation (whether the subjugated become the powerful matters little as the cycle of violence’s continuation is guaranteed). This is repeated perpetually in cycles of conflict between human communities until it is broken by the establishment of a peaceful coexistence that follows the transcendence of the psychological, spiritual, and socio-economic bases of the relationship between the peoples who were in conflict. The transcendence can happen when the critical period of heightened attention caused by a disruption of normality opens the door to new understandings before it is shut again in the closed-minded and hard oppositional environment that accompanies violence and counter-violence’s march to subjugation of one of the parties in the relationship. … we must protect ourselves from violent attack and survive in a physical sense, but we should have faith in the power of our ideas and in our abilities to communicate her ideas without resorting to the mute force of violence to bring our message to people.We should seek to contend, to inform our agitating direct actions with ideas, and to use the effects of this contention to defeat colonialism by convincing people of the need to abandon the cycle of subjugation in conflict enjoying us in a relationship of respect and sharing.

Grandmum was a broken record and granddad had had enough of the music. She never stopped yappin’. He? One might’ve thought him mute. Recipe for relationship disaster. Hence, the irony of my grandparents: They could survive absolute poverty and a Japanese invasion-cum-genocide, but they couldn’t survive each other.

Self love is not as difficult a discovery as some folks will conjecture. Muting the ego's clamourous influence over the conscience. This could be the support 'self' needs to begin-to-understand' that a Divine Creator had them in mind before building their flesh brain around the soul's spirit body, purely out of a love that pre-existed prior to that of ones existence. That love was magnificently demonstrated in the hybrid spirit-to-flesh-body-back to Spiritual Saviour who purpose in introduction, activity and prophetic discourse documentation, rejection turned persecution, crucifixion and Divine Spirit Resurrection to regain proper origin in (complete soul) relationship back to each living human being. Love went through all of that to restore us back to Supreme of absolute Love. To accept that truth brings light thru revelation which guides the spirit of oneself to change thoughts from dark external influences that make us not love ourselves. How can you sp easily reject yourself against the the existence of a Love Creator that "loved" you into life, and paid an extreme price with His hybrid life to powerfully save yours back to him, from which you came. Don't get lost in the deep details. Get LOVED!

The reason gender based violence wont end soon is because people are fighting people they don't like. They are not fighting the problem which is gender based violence and are not fighting the people who are wrong which are offenders, because when it is done by their favorites they decide to be mute instead of reprimanding their favorites.

I regularly hear statements like, “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea—I’m married to a wonderful man—but I never know what he is feeling.” One such dissatisfied woman brought her spouse to a workshop, during which she told him, “I feel like I’m married to a wall.” The husband then did an excellent imitation of a wall: he sat mute and immobile. Exasperated, she turned to me and exclaimed, “See! This is what happens all the time. He sits and says nothing. It’s just like living with a wall.” “It sounds to me like you are feeling lonely and wanting more emotional contact with your husband,” I responded. When she agreed, I tried to show how statements such as “I feel like I’m living with a wall” are unlikely to bring her feelings and desires to her husband’s attention. In fact, they are more likely to be heard as criticism than as invitations to connect with our feelings. Furthermore, such statements often lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. A husband, for example, hears himself criticized for behaving like a wall; he is hurt and discouraged and doesn’t respond, thereby confirming his wife’s image of him as a wall.