Realistic Relationship Quotes

I know I'm not going to be in your head all the time. But once you know me, I'll be forever in your heart. 

With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.

The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.

Women who say that they have met the most amazing guy in the world are only saying that because they haven’t lived with them yet.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

When you leave, I feel like I'm alone with your demons.

The word hope first appeared in English about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire. But what I desired—life—was not what I was confident about—death. When I talked about hope, then, did I really mean “Leave some room for unfounded desire?” No. Medical statistics not only describe numbers such as mean survival, they measure our confidence in our numbers, with tools like confidence levels, confidence intervals, and confidence bounds. So did I mean “Leave some room for a statistically improbable but still plausible outcome—a survival just above the measured 95 percent confidence interval?” Is that what hope was? Could we divide the curve into existential sections, from “defeated” to “pessimistic” to “realistic” to “hopeful” to “delusional”? Weren’t the numbers just the numbers? Had we all just given in to the “hope” that every patient was above average? It occurred to me that my relationship with statistics changed as soon as I became one.

You can't compare men or women with mental disorders to the normal expectations of men and women in without mental orders. Your dealing with symptoms and until you understand that you will always try to find sane explanations among insane behaviors. You will always have unreachable standards and disappointments. If you want to survive in a marriage to someone that has a disorder you have to judge their actions from a place of realistic expectations in regards to that person's upbringing and diagnosis.

In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy." “Women’s sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women as to see themselves in a relationship of connection…I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein that have quietly buried in many neat rows– the personal dreams they have given up for their families…(Women) have a sort of talent for changing form, enabling them to dissolve and then flow around the needs of their partners, or the needs of their children, or the needs of mere quotidian reality. They adjust, adapt, glide, accept.” “The cold ugly fact is that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. From studies, married men perform dazzingly better in life, live longer, accumulate more, excel at careers, report to be happier, less likely to die from a violent death, suffer less from alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression than single man…The reverse is not true. In fact, every fact is reverse, single women fare much better than married women. On average, married women take a 7% pay cut. All of this adds up to what Sociologists called the “Marriage Benefit Imbalance”…It is important to pause here and inspect why so women long for it (marriage) so deeply.

I enjoy sitting at home eating a whole pizza, washing it down with a six pack of Budweiser and watching Anime on a Friday evening, can I realistically expect that hot fitness instructor at the gym to come on over and genuinely want to fuck my brains out?

Don't set your husband up on a pedestal and then cry when you find that he is only an ordinary man, after all.

Should' assumes that when either willingness or ability is lacking, it may be compensated for by an abundance of the other. This is simply not realistic.

I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined. Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.

Why don’t you put up a stand by the road.” I blurted out.

As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren’t necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm, he thought, had chosen reliability, and competence (Sophie was intimidatingly efficient), and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness. Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people’s relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What’s going on there? Now, though, as an almost-forty-eight-year-old, he saw people’s relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now

Though many of my arguments will be coolly analytical — that an acknowledgment of human nature does not, logically speaking, imply the negative outcomes so many people fear — I will not try to hide my belief that they have a positive thrust as well. "Man will become better when you show him what he is like," wrote Chekhov, and so the new sciences of human nature can help lead the way to a realistic, biologically informed humanism. They expose the psychological unity of our species beneath the superficial differences of physical appearance and parochial culture. They make us appreciate the wondrous complexity of the human mind, which we are apt to take for granted precisely because it works so well. They identify the moral intuitions that we can put to work in improving our lot. They promise a naturalness in human relationships, encouraging us to treat people in terms of how they do feel rather than how some theory says they ought to feel. They offer a touchstone by which we can identify suffering and oppression wherever they occur, unmasking the rationalizations of the powerful. They give us a way to see through the designs of self-appointed social reformers who would liberate us from our pleasures. They renew our appreciation for the achievements of democracy and of the rule of law. And they enhance the insights of artists and philosophers who have reflected on the human condition for millennia.

As infants, we see the world in parts. There is the good—the things that feed and nourish us. There is the bad—the things that frustrate or deny us. As children mature, they come to see the world in more complex ways, realizing, for example, that beyond black and white, there are shades of gray. The same mother who feeds us may sometimes have no milk. Over time, we transform a collection of parts into a comprehension of wholes.4 With this integration, we learn to tolerate disappointment and ambiguity. And we learn that to sustain realistic relationships, one must accept others in their complexity. When we imagine a robot as a true companion, there is no need to do any of this work.

This, the idea of relationships bit, was all conjecture on her part. She herself felt too young to try to figure out her own life, let alone someone else's life near hers, and so she had never even sought out companionship of that type. Jackie thought about dating from time to time in the distant way a person thinks about eventually becoming famous or owning a castle or growing ram's horns. They're all achievable, realistic goals, but by turning objectives into mere fantasies, she never had to go through the trouble of achieving or maintaining them.

Some survivors can be wary of most people, yet blinded by compassion toward fellow survivors or others who suffer — or who pretend to suffer, or exaggerate their sufferings, in order to take advantage of the survivor. Some survivors overidentify with other survivors, not realizing that even if someone was traumatized or suffers in a similar way, it doesn’t necessarily mean that person is honest. Being either overly suspicious or overly trusting can create problems with a partner who is able to judge the sincerity of others more realistically.

When the Romantic Novelists' Association was founded 35 years ago (in 1960) the image was of pink fluffy bimbos. Now, the view of life through rose-coloured spectacles has gone out of the window. A realistic background and certainly a more realistic relationship between a man and a woman are the important things.

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don’t think that’s controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, “You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier.” That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone. So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don’t care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don’t care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That’s not a realistic solution.

The good news is that by grasping the concept of emotional immaturity, you can develop more realistic expectations of other people, accepting the level of relationship possible with them instead of feeling hurt by their lack of response.

Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.' ...At the time, he hadn't believed these words, because at the time, everything really did seem possible: he was twenty-three, and everyone was young and attractive and smart and glamorous. Everyone thought they would be friends for decades, forever. But for most people, of course, that hadn't happened. As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren't necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm, he thought, had chosen reliability, and competence...and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness, Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people's relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What's going on there? Now, though, as an almost-forty-eight-year-old, he saw people's relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples - in restaurants, on the street, at parties - and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What's missing in you that you want someone else to provide? He now viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had of offer and had chosen to value it as well.

Each store will fulfil some of your needs, but no individual store can meet all of your needs. Learning how to set realistic expectations now and in future relationships requires you to examine each of the existing stores to see what they can offer.

I think there’s a ton of fear in the perception of romance in part because there’s something very realistic in great romance — namely, that women have the right to demand relationships that are based on equality and honesty and trust and, yes, a great sex life.

Empty threats are for dreamers. And I fancy myself a realist.

Is this what my life’s come to? I’m a couples counselor, and I’m getting my own relationship advice from a divorce lawyer.” “You’re an idealist. I’m a realist.” I

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.” ― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

The path to liberation lies in cultivating a more loving and realistic relationship with life, one that recognizes that there is no finish line, that we are all unformed.

HONESTY is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of grief that is conferred upon even the most average life. Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.

Sure, love happens," he said finally. "But it's better to be realistic so shit is not constantly blowing up in your face. And love is way more likely to blow up in your face than to bring eternal happiness. And if it doesn't hurt you, then you're the one hurting someone else. "Entering a relationship is borderline sadomasochistic. Especially when you can get everything you would from a romantic relationship from a friendship, without destroying anyone's life when it inevitably ends.

In writing The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford wasn’t trying to improve our relationship with death, she was trying to improve out relationship with the price point. That is where she went wrong. It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money. The realistic interaction with death and the chance to face our own mortality.

We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner. Psychiatrists are taught this in their training and know that it is impossible to realistically understand the conflicts and transferences of their patients without understanding their own transferences and conflicts.

Maybe I selfishly figured out Clay was as lonely as I am. Or maybe I did hope he was pining after me a little. Not realistically, of course, but in a faraway kind of way. Like in the way one might daydream about a popular boy in school who the teacher assigns as your lab partner. Your relationship is purely based on frog spleens and formaldehyde, but sometimes he laughs at your joke and you think... maybe. Maybe. It's the "maybe" I'm mourning. The daydreams, even. That's what I'm all out of sort about. My lab partner asked someone else to the dance, and I'm left with the uncomfortable realization he was just being polite.

I lack experience. In so many ways.

Maybe, you will kiss the modern bride Let's agree to disagree, babe on everything, in advance Just duct tape my heart to yours babe

ADAPTIVE CHILD WISE ADULT Black & White Nuanced Perfectionistic Realistic Relentless Forgiving Rigid Flexible Harsh Warm Hard Yielding Certain Humble Tight in body Relaxed in body

Healthy people learn how to frequently adjust their thoughts to make reality comfortable and realistic.

A relationship is more likely to succeed if positive attributes are confidently set in place and adhered to.

The moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. Whehn we do that, high hopes are still possible.

The moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. When we do that, high hopes are still possible.

The war,’ she said once, ‘left me with a deep knowledge of human suffering which I expect many other young people never know about. The things I saw during the occupation made me very realistic about life, and I’ve been that way ever since. Don’t,’ she added, ‘discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It’s worse than you could ever imagine. I came out of the war thankful to be alive, aware that human relationships are the most important thing of all, far more than wealth, food, luxury, careers, or anything you can mention.

Self-doubt is that part of the soul that is able to taste the bitter in life as well as the sweet. It is open to a side of life that a sunny disposition must ignore in order to carry on smiling. It is less interested in pretense and more aware of the suffering entailed in daily living. It is realistic about the balance of suffering and happiness, but because of this realism is willing to be thankful for whatever genuine happiness is possible. It celebrates the melancholy nature of aloneness, but because of its refusal to shirk aloneness knows the worth of a real relationship.

Never before in history had societies thought that such a set of high expectations about marriage was either realistic or desirable. Although many Europeans and Americans found tremendous joy in building their relationships around these values, the adoption of these unprecedented goals for marriage had unanticipated and revolutionary consequences that have since come to threaten the stability of the entire institution.

...there is no stigma attached to acknowledging a lack of love in one's primary relationships. And if one's goal is self-recovery, to be well in one's soul, honestly and realistically confronting lovelessness is part of the healing process.

Emotional hunger is not love, though people often confuse the two. Hunger is a strong need caused by emotional deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a vain and desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet many people refuse to bear their pain and are unwilling to accept the futility of attempting to gratify their primitive dependency needs.

more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships.8 These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable, or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families, too.

[P]sychiatric treatments should be directed toward the correction of interpersonal distortions, thus enabling the individual to lead a more abundant life, to participate collaboratively with others, to obtain interpersonal satisfactions in the context of realistic, mutually satisfying interpersonal relationships[.]

Maugham described the novel as “the story of a nine days wonder in a Lambeth slum” and confessed to being influenced by the great authors of realistic novels, such as Maupassant; however, Maugham was also accused of being overly influenced (to the point of plagiarism) by other gritty novels set in the slums, such as Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison, published in 1896. Some themes are bound to recur in such novels — descriptions of living conditions, the brutality of relationships, the dangers of living and working in such insanitary districts — so the critics that accused Maugham of copying were perhaps being unduly harsh,

EXERCISE Creating Authentic Relationships The questions below deal with issues most people take for granted and let society define for them. You can start with a blank canvas and create your own definitions. • How do you define intimacy and closeness? • What constitutes a relationship for you? • Are there different types of relationships you wish you could have? • How long should a significant relationship last? • What is sex? Is it intercourse? Is it more specific: penis-in-vagina or penis-in-ass intercourse? What about manual stimulation and penetration, oral sex, sex toys, BDSM play? • What kinds of things do you consider intimate? Sex, sexual touch, genital contact, a BDSM scene with no sexual aspect? • Must you live near a partner for a relationship to be important? • How do you define fidelity? • What constitutes loving, affectionate, sexual, and romantic behavior? Where do things like flirting, kissing, love letters, gift giving, dating, courting, phone calls, emails, and instant messages fit into your definitions? • What does commitment mean to you? How do you define a committed relationship? • What are the most important things you need in a relationship? • How important is it for you to live with a partner? • Realistically , how much time and energy do you have to give to a relationship?  

We feasted on love; every mode of it, solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers. She was my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign, my trusty comrade, friends, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend has ever been to me.

Transitions come in all shapes and sizes. We could change jobs or change relationships or move to another city or country, we could change our habits or try another fashion style, other social activities, or new communities. Keep in mind that change should not make us afraid, but on the contrary, it should make us embrace new horizons, new environments, interesting people, and exceptional challenges.

The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)

Kay Douglas's book is the most supportive, realistic, and practical guide for abused women that I have encountered. A woman with this book in her hands is on the path to a new life. The author really 'gets it' about what it takes to deal with a destructive partner and takes the reader step-by-step from the beginnings of grasping what is happening to her all the way to healing once the relationship has ended. Outstanding!

In writing The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford wasn’t trying to improve our relationship with death, she was trying to improve our relationship with the price point. That is where she went wrong. It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money. The realistic interaction with death and the chance to face our own mortality. For all of Mitford’s good intentions, direct cremation has only made the situation worse.

A secure attachment is marked by “self-confidence, empathy, and trust,” note researchers Christopher Weber and Christopher Federico, and can lead to a general belief that the world is a “safe, harmonious place” populated by people of goodwill. The secure voter, therefore, will tend to be tolerant of ambiguity and disinclined to embrace a rigid dogmatism. According to attachment expert Mario Mikulincer, a secure attachment produces “more moderate, more flexible, and more realistic political views.

The overarching principle of a therapeutic relationship is that therapists should be ever mindful of a variant of the Hippocratic oath and, to the degree possible, strive to "do no more harm" (Courtois, 2010). Complex trauma clients have already experienced considerable harm, much of it at the hands of other human beings. As a result of the ubiquitous processes of transference, attachment styles, and IWM [Internal working models], these clients often view the therapist's behavior and their relationship through the lens of their trauma-related negative interpersonal expectancies and unhealed emotional wounds and injuries. Therapists should not be surprised to be "guilty until proven innocent", not because clients with complex trauma histories are "unfair" or "unreasonable" but precisely the opposite - because the most realistic self-protective stance for them (given the fact that betrayal and harm have been more the rule than the exception) is to "distrust first and verify" (or to be hypervigilant) rather than to start with an expectation of safety and trustworthiness.

Disappointment in a relationship with someone from whom we were expecting a lot (perhaps too much) can teach us to go deeper in prayer, in our relationship with God, and to look to him for that fullness, that peace and security, that only his infinite love can guarantee. Disappointments in relationships with other people oblige us to pass from “idolatrous” love to a love that is realistic, free, and happy. Romantic love will always be threatened with disappointments. Charity never is, because it “does not insist on its own way”54 or seek its own interest.

Just as no sane farmer would express disappointment because his cow did not lay eggs or hope that his cow might be induced to lay eggs, an intelligent observer should be expected to refrain from critical or hortatory discussion of the functional capacity of the United Nations that is uninformed by an accurate understanding of the realistic possibilities. We have no warrant for being hopeful, disillusioned, cynical, or fearful of the United Nations, unless the expectations that enter into our judgment bear some sensible relationship to the nature of the organization and the limitations set by the political context within which it operates.

Today, people still expect to be married ‘till death us do part’, and much of life revolves around having and raising children. Now try to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting married at forty, she still has 110 years to go. Will it be realistic to expect her marriage to last 110 years? Even Catholic fundamentalists might baulk at that. So the current trend of serial marriages is likely to intensify. Bearing two children in her forties, she will, by the time she is 120, have only a distant memory of the years she spent raising them – a rather minor episode in her long life. It’s hard to tell what kind of new parent–child relationship might develop under such circumstances.

Actually, some asexual people celebrate sex—up to and including engaging in it themselves despite lack of sexual attraction. Some asexual people write stories or produce art depicting sexual situations and/or nudity. Some asexual people have no problem with consuming media that contains sexual content. They do not have to be attracted to other people to appreciate or create positive portrayals of these relationships. This can be especially difficult to explain if an asexual artist does create sexually explicit material, because people want to know whether they’re creating this because they secretly desire it. Or they might reverse the issue and suggest asexual people have no business creating this media—or that they can’t be good at it—if they don’t have personal experience. What artists choose to make art about has absolutely no bearing on what they’re attracted to or what they might want to experience themselves. Art can be used to express personal desires, but no one should assume someone must be doing so if that person depicts experiences or images contrary to personally expressed desires, and no one should use a person’s artwork or subject matter to invalidate claims. Asexual artists cannot be restricted to creating media that is devoid of sex. Asexual artists know and accept that most people are attracted sexually to others, so if they want to write realistic books or movies, they generally have to create at least some of their subjects with that dimension attached to them.

One fairly common denominator was having a relationship, personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people. But a second, more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships.8 These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable, or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families, too.

When these red flags appeared early on, the narrative was “shaped” in a way that was at times romantic, passionate, and even practical. The old saying of “love is blind” applies here, and before these patterns set in, hope is often what allows people to look the other way when the red flags arise. Over time, the narratives become a bit more realistic, hope begins to fade, and it becomes brutally clear that these patterns of mistrust, anger, and deceit are here to stay. A human relationship should not be built on what you can do for someone, but simply on a mutual partnership. A narcissistic relationship can often devolve into superficial attributes, such as jobs, schools, titles, resources, addresses, photo-shopped images, status posts, quiet children, well-appointed homes, and possessions.

I suspected that most marriages were more complicated than couples tended to let on. That summer, it seemed like every week brought news of another pair in our community who were splitting up. They were all around our age, most with little kids, trying to run their own businesses in a small economy. The evidence of those breakups directly contradicted the rosy way relationships were portrayed on Facebook, in public. I began to believe that future generations would study how we represent our long-term partnerships, and call us on our lies, in the same way we look at the way the Victorians depicted sex and know that it simply wasn't like that, not behind closed doors or in the hayloft. We hide marital conflict with the same sense of decorum. We'd do more good if we were honest and set realistic expectations for what it's like in the long run.

For realists, the state is the main actor and sovereignty is its distinguishing trait. The meaning of the sovereign state is inextricably bound up with the use of force. In terms of its internal dimension, to illustrate this relationship between violence and the state we need to look no further than Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as ‘the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’(M. J. Smith 1986: 23).3 Within this territorial space, sovereignty means that the state has supreme authority to make and enforce laws. This is the basis of the unwritten contract between individuals and the state. According to Hobbes, for example, we trade our liberty in return for a guarantee of security. Once security has been established, civil society can begin. But in the absence of security, there can be no art, no culture, no society. The first move, then, for the realist is to organize power domestically. Only after power has been organized, can community begin.

With a deeper understanding of reality,” the Dalai Lama has explained, “you can go beyond appearances and relate to the world in a much more appropriate, effective, and realistic manner. I often give the example of how we should relate to our neighbors. Imagine that you are living next to a difficult neighbor. You can judge and criticize them. You can live in anxiety and despair that you will never have a good relationship with them. You can deny the problem or pretend that you do not have a difficult relationship with your neighbor. None of these is very helpful. “Instead, you can accept that your relationship with your neighbor is difficult and that you would like to improve it. You may or may not succeed, but all you can do is try. You cannot control your neighbor, but you do have some control over your thoughts and feelings. Instead of anger, instead of hatred, instead of fear, you can cultivate compassion for them, you can cultivate kindness toward them, you can cultivate warmheartedness toward them. This is the only chance to improve the relationship. In time, maybe they will become less difficult. Maybe not. This you cannot control, but you will have your peace of mind. You will be able to be joyful and happy whether your neighbor becomes less difficult or not.

As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren't necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. if you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm he thought, had chosen reliability and competence (sophie was intimidatingly efficient), and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness. Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people's relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What's going on there? Now, though, as an almost 48 year old, he saw people's relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples-in restaurants, on the street, at parties-and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What's missing in you that you want someone else to provide? he now viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had to offer and had chosen to value it as well.

As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren’t necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm, he thought, had chosen reliability, and competence (Sophie was intimidatingly efficient), and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness. Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people’s relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What’s going on there? Now, though, as an almost-forty-eight-year-old, he saw people’s relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples—in restaurants, on the street, at parties—and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What’s missing in you that you want someone else to provide? He now viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had to offer and had chosen to value it as well.

In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, in addition to the daily letter I also made sure to send her a Valentine’s card and a different bar of chocolate. I was buying really nice bars of chocolate, all different flavors and kinds. She was only allowed to eat them right there at mail call, and sometimes she would get several packages at once, so even though it was hard to do, she’d share bites of her chocolate with other people. I also made sure to give extra thought to the regular, daily letter that would arrive on Valentine’s Day: Jamie, In the beginning of our relationship I criticized your expectations in a boyfriend. I told you that you watched too many movies and lived in a fantasy world. In a way I was asking you to settle. Even through our arguments about what was realistic and what was a fairy tale, I did everything I could to be your prince in a world where I saw you as the princess that you are. I was wrong to ever question you. Your standards never dropped and it forced me to rise up to the level needed to keep you. Like a storybook romance, I’ve defended your honor, showered you with love, worshipped the ground you walk on, and will faithfully wait for you while you’re away. You have made me a better man. Because of you I live a life I am proud of and have become the father, brother, son, and friend my family deserves. Your love has positively affected every aspect of my life. And for that I could never repay you. But I will happily be forever yours, paying off my debt and love for years to come. Like your favorite movie, Beauty and the Beast, a tale as old as time, we are living proof that fantasy can be reality. Love always and forever, Noah I’d never been that outwardly romantic before. I’d never worn my feelings on my sleeve quite like I did with her.

People who don’t read science fiction, but who have at least given it a fair shot, often say they’ve found it inhuman, elitist, and escapist. Since its characters, they say, are both conventionalized and extraordinary, all geniuses, space heroes, superhackers, androgynous aliens, it evades what ordinary people really have to deal with in life, and so fails an essential function of fiction. However remote Jane Austen’s England is, the people in it are immediately relevant and revelatory—reading about them we learn about ourselves. Has science fiction anything to offer but escape from ourselves? The cardboard-character syndrome was largely true of early science fiction, but for decades writers have been using the form to explore character and human relationships. I’m one of them. An imagined setting may be the most appropriate in which to work out certain traits and destinies. But it’s also true that a great deal of contemporary fiction isn’t a fiction of character. This end of the century isn’t an age of individuality as the Elizabethan and the Victorian ages were. Our stories, realistic or otherwise, with their unreliable narrators, dissolving points of view, multiple perceptions and perspectives, often don’t have depth of character as their central value. Science fiction, with its tremendous freedom of metaphor, has sent many writers far ahead in this exploration beyond the confines of individuality—Sherpas on the slopes of the postmodern. As for elitism, the problem may be scientism: technological edge mistaken for moral superiority. The imperialism of high technocracy equals the old racist imperialism in its arrogance; to the technophile, people who aren’t in the know/in the net, who don’t have the right artifacts, don’t count. They’re proles, masses, faceless nonentities. Whether it’s fiction or history, the story isn’t about them. The story’s about the kids with the really neat, really expensive toys. So “people” comes to be operationally defined as those who have access to an extremely elaborate fast-growth industrial technology. And “technology” itself is restricted to that type. I have heard a man say perfectly seriously that the Native Americans before the Conquest had no technology. As we know, kiln-fired pottery is a naturally occurring substance, baskets ripen in the summer, and Machu Picchu just grew there. Limiting humanity to the producer-consumers of a complex industrial growth technology is a really weird idea, on a par with defining humanity as Greeks, or Chinese, or the upper-middle-class British. It leaves out a little too much. All fiction, however, has to leave out most people. A fiction interested in complex technology may legitimately leave out the (shall we say) differently technologized, as a fiction about suburban adulteries may ignore the city poor, and a fiction centered on the male psyche may omit women. Such omission may, however, be read as a statement that advantage is superiority, or that the white middle class is the whole society, or that only men are worth writing about. Moral and political statements by omission are legitimated by the consciousness of making them, insofar as the writer’s culture permits that consciousness. It comes down to a matter of taking responsibility. A denial of authorial responsibility, a willed unconsciousness, is elitist, and it does impoverish much of our fiction in every genre, including realism.

Busyness lies. It tricks us into thinking that things are happening. That we’re going places, being productive, living a full life. The exhilarating effects of stress, not the quiet or stillness after chaos, is familiar. We would rather have something, than nothing, even if that something is…empty. We all do this. We look to relationships, drugs or distractions to fill so-called “voids” and assuage our loneliness or anxiety about who we are and the uncertainty of our futures. Isn't that why we tie our self worth to salaries and job titles in hopes that this will validate us? Isn't that why we justify the long hours, routine work, and deteriorating relationships as “real life?” How is it that we've become so complacent? I refuse to believe that with age, you need to be realistic and live out your decisions based on what’s been done or what’s expected of you. What if we stopped looking externally for validation or excitement, but found that within ourselves? See I want to feel like life is worth living. Not for culture, not for the societal structures and institutions in place, not for the security, none of that. Just life itself. The idea that being alive is enough…beautiful, even. I don’t want to be tied down to a job I despise or to be surrounded by people who take that shit too seriously. And by shit, I mean, jobs, resumes, salaries, kids, marriage, age, any of it. Others may be able to go through life’s routine and find their truth, or perhaps never bother finding it at all. But I can’t. I just can’t.

1. State the situation. “You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic,” says Rosenberg. She made it clear to the A.M.A. that (a) having no women speakers was wrong, and (b) hiring her would be a step in the right direction. It makes sense that before you can speak persuasively—that is, before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand. 2. Communicate your feelings. We downplay the influence of emotions in our day-to-day contacts, especially in the business world. We’re told that vulnerability is a bad thing and we should be wary of revealing our feelings. But as we gain comfort using “I feel” with others, our encounters take on depth and sincerity. Your emotions are a gift of respect and caring to your listeners. 3. Deliver the bottom line. This is the moment of truth when you state, with utter clarity, what it is you want. If you’re going to put your neck on the line, you’d better know why. The truth is the fastest route to a solution, but be realistic. While I knew Phil Knight of Nike wasn’t going to buy anything based on one five-minute conversation on a bus in Davos, Switzerland, I did make sure to get his e-mail and tell him that I’d like to follow up with him again sometime. Then I did so. 4. Use an open-ended question. A request that is expressed as a question—one that cannot be answered by a yes or no—is less threatening. How do you feel about this? How can we solve this problem? The issue has been raised, your feelings expressed, your desires articulated. With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you. I didn’t insist on a specific lunch date at a specific time with Phil. I left it open and didn’t allow our first exchange to be weighted down by unnecessary obligations

Structurally, then, errors of love are similar to errors in general. Emotionally, however, they are in a league of their own: astounding, enduring, miserable, incomprehensible. True, certain other large-scale errors can rival or even dwarf them; we’ve gotten a taste of that in recent chapters. But relatively few of us will undergo, for example, the traumatic and total abandonment of a deeply held religious belief, or the wrongful identification of an assailant. By contrast, the vast majority of us will get our hearts seriously broken, quite possibly more than once. And when we do, we will experience not one but two kinds of wrongness about love. The first is a specific error about a specific person—the loss of faith in a relationship, whether it ended because our partner left us or because we grew disillusioned. But, as I’ve suggested, we will also find that we were wrong about love in a more general way: that we embraced an account of it that is manifestly implausible. The specific error might be the one that breaks our heart, but the general one noticeably compounds the heartache. A lover who is part of our very soul can’t be wrong for us, nor can we be wrong about her. A love that is eternal cannot end. And yet it does, and there we are—mired in a misery made all the more extreme by virtue of being unthinkable. We can’t do much about the specific error—the one in which we turn out to be wrong about (or wronged by) someone we once deeply loved. (In fact, this is a good example of a kind of error we can’t eliminate and shouldn’t want to.) But what about the general error? Why do we embrace a narrative of love that makes the demise of our relationships that much more shocking, humiliating, and painful? There are, after all, less romantic and more realistic narratives of love available to us: the cool biochemical one, say, where the only heroes are hormones; the implacable evolutionary one, where the communion of souls is supplanted by the transmission of genes; or just a slightly more world-weary one, where love is rewarding and worth it, but nonetheless unpredictable and possibly impermanent—Shakespeare’s wandering bark rather than his fixèd mark. Any of these would, at the very least, help brace us for the blow of love’s end. But at what price? Let go of the romantic notion of love, and we also relinquish the protection it purports to offer us against loneliness and despair. Love can’t bridge the gap between us and the world if it is, itself, evidence of that gap—just another fallible human theory, about ourselves, about the people we love, about the intimate “us” of a relationship. Whatever the cost, then, we must think of love as wholly removed from the earthly, imperfect realm of theory-making. Like the love of Aristophanes’ conjoined couples before they angered the gods, like the love of Adam and Eve before they were exiled from the Garden of Eden, we want our own love to predate and transcend the gap between us and the world.

I’m also the mother of a teenage boy. I’ve said in the past, and I’ll say it again, that fourteen-year-old boys are like the single-cell protozoan version of a husband. I often want to invite my single girlfriends over to my house for a day so they can get a clear picture of what they’re really dealing with when it comes to men. It’s not that all men are immature. It’s that all men have a part inside them that matches the part inside me that never really left ninth grade. And in order to love them (and love myself), I’m going to need to get realistic about that part.

No Means No. Human-on-elf and orc-on-human rape are the implied backstories for lots of halfbreed characters in D&D[13]. That may be the most realistic option, but it’s boring and done too often. What about the product of a loving relationship? What might that truth, in the face of obvious and hateful assumptions made by others, mean to a character?

According to famed psychologist David McClelland, there are three basic types of motivation: 1) Achievement, 2) Authority and 3) Affiliation. Achievement Seekers Those who seek Achievement are looking for the following things: They attain realistic but challenging goals. Achieving the task is its own reward. Financial reward is a measurement of success. Security/status are not the primary motivators. Feedback is a quantifiable measure of success. They seek improvement. Authority Seekers Employees who seek Authority are looking for the following things: They value their ideas being heard and prevailing. Having influence and impact is the most important reward. They show leadership skills and enjoy directing others. Increasing personal status and prestige is important. Affiliation Seekers Employees who are motivated by Affiliation are looking for the following things: They need friendly relationships and are motivated by interaction with others. Being liked and held in high regard is important. They are team players. Emotions are a larger motivating factor than quantifiable data. They are in tune with others’ feelings and seek to make others happy.

Negative He has rigid attitudes. He is jealous, suspicious. He is defiant. He is lonely. He is insensitive to his feelings. He poses a high risk for addiction. He is secretive. He holds inner anger. He fears being hurt. He frequently resorts to denial of problems. Transitions Needed • Learn interpersonal relationship skills. • Develop a realistic concept of a healthy relationship. • Develop alternatives for handling stress. • Learn to identify and express your emotions. • Learn to accept help and support from others.

When love carries us away on its brittle wings, we are too intoxicated to comprehend its power. We just want to soar and feel its adventurous spirit. The realistic aspect of love is not that romantic.

There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their miseries without bringing them one inch closer to recovery. There is also no contradiction between harm reduction and abstinence. The two objectives are incompatible only if we imagine that we can set the agenda for someone else’s life regardless of what he or she may choose. We cannot. Short of extreme coercion there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to induce another to give up addiction, except to provide the island of relief where contemplation and self-respect can, perhaps, take root. Those ready to choose abstinence should receive every possible support — much more support than we currently provide. But what of those who don’t choose that path? The impossibility of changing other people is not restricted to addictions. Try as we may to motivate another person to be different or to do this or not to do that, our attempts founder on a basic human trait: the drive for autonomy. “And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests and sometimes one positively ought,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in Notes from the Underground. “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.” The issue is not whether the addict would be better off without his habit — of course he would — but whether we are going to abandon him if he is unable to give it up. Are we willing to care for human beings who suffer because of their own persistent behaviours, mindful that these behaviours stem from early life misfortunes they had no hand in creating? The harm reduction approach accepts that some people — many people — are too deeply enmeshed in substance dependence for any realistic “cure” under present circumstances. There is, for now, too much pain in their lives and too few internal and external resources available to them. In practising harm reduction we do not give up on abstinence — on the contrary, we may hope to encourage that possibility by helping people feel better, bringing them into therapeutic relationships with caregivers, offering them a sense of trust, removing judgment from our interactions with them and giving them a sense of acceptance. At the same time, we do not hold out abstinence as the Holy Grail and we do not make our valuation of addicts as worthwhile human beings dependent on their making choices that please us. Harm reduction is as much an attitude and way of being as it is a set of policies and methods.

What a woman must do at the Beginning is stay realistic and slow the relationship down. At the Beginning, you have a great deal of ego leverage and control. Use it to set the pace and tone that will lead to permanency. No matter how much you're tempted to go along with his "Hollywood" style, don't do it.

I don’t accept the judgment that in using images and metaphors of other worlds, space travel, the future, imagined technologies, societies, or beings, science fiction escapes from having human relevance to our lives. Those images and metaphors used by a serious writer are images and metaphors of our lives, legitimately novelistic, symbolic ways of saying what cannot otherwise be said about us, our being and choices, here and now. What science fiction does is enlarge the here and now. What do you find interesting? To some people only other people are interesting. Some people really don’t care about trees or fish or stars or how engines work or why the sky is blue; they’re exclusively human-centered, often with the encouragement of their religion; and they aren’t going to like either science or science fiction. Like all the sciences except anthropology, psychology, and medicine, science fiction is not exclusively human-centered. It includes other beings, other aspects of being. It may be about relationships between people—the great subject of realist fiction—but it may be about the relationship between a person and something else, another kind of being, an idea, a machine, an experience, a society.

From our perspective, many, many years later, there are a few comments to make on this dispute between the Confucians and the Mohists. On the issue of love, the Confucians are more realistic. They leverage the self-interest that all people have, and build circles around it, extending it outward. That means that the Confucian ideal is quite practical as a social model. The Mohists were more idealistic. They thought that the self-interest of Confucians was unacceptable, which made their universal love difficult to put into practice. If you ask me which side I lean toward, I can answer without hesitation: the Mohists. They may have been impractical, but they brought into the world a pure ideal of love. This ideal is like light from the heavens. We cannot touch it, but it illuminates us. Confucian benevolence is too caught up in its distinctions between insiders and outsiders, turning human relationships into a labyrinth from which we have not managed to escape even today. Of course, imperfect love is better than no love at all. For those crushed by the pitiless wheels of history, Confucian love was something to yearn for.

Taking things too personally can be a sign of either narcissism or low self-esteem. Both traits cause problems in relationships because they lead people to constantly seek reassurance from others. In addition, people who take things personally often feel that they’re being evaluated, seeing slights and criticisms where they don’t exist. This kind of defensiveness consumes relationship energy like a black hole. In contrast, emotionally mature people understand that most of us can put our foot in our mouth at times. If you say you misspoke, they won’t insist on a postmortem to uncover potential unconscious negativity toward them. They can see a social gaffe as a mistake, not a rejection. They’re realistic enough to not feel unloved just because you made a mistake.

The nature of being at the correct distance from the opponent and of understanding the principle of reaction time does not give the attacker the luxury of completing more than one strike before being counterattacked by a skilled defender. Once you have created the distraction with your first strike, you need to continue and attack appropriately. Therefore, when you train, students need to gain a complete understanding of what they are drilling and the training drill should be designed accordingly. Be aware that the human mind is constantly trying to create imaginary connections between motion possibilities without always seeing the whole picture. Shortening the range from a kick to a hand strike cuts down on time between the first and subsequent attacks. Such an attempt does not recognize that a good defense against a kick eliminates the option for a continuous hand attack since that was already taken into account. Executing multiple attacks on the defense however would break the opponent’s train of thought and give the initiator another second to hit again. If you have reached the target through the first strike, with no obstacles, you are buying time for a more devastating attack. You must recognize that with less devastating strikes, you buy less time, and in a real fight it is measured in splits of a second. It should only take a few seconds to finish the opponent. Krav Maga principles dictate a perfect relationship in which a counterattack requires the same speed as the block, but sometimes the distance can be too close to accelerate the hand to a maximum speed—and then you are just buying another second and must follow up with a more devastating attack. If you deliver attacks of medium strength, your opponent might get the message and stop attacking you. However, while it is a good practice to change an attacker’s mind and habits, you may not want to risk your own life protecting your attacker from extensive harm. Finally, when executing a counterattack, please be as precise as possible, so you do not need to rework. I personally would not spend more than two seconds on one opponent, since it would occupy and distract me from other dangerous changes that might occur in the environment. If you break glass in a store, you would want to get out of there as quickly as possible instead of waiting around in the same spot. I’d like to remind the reader that the above paragraphs elaborate the dangers and safety in both training and in reality. By understanding safe training, you need to understand the dangers of reality. To master the process, you need to train in simulated scenarios that are as close as possible to a realistic fight for survival. Keep in mind that when you identify a threat, you should set your boundaries, and decide that if the opponent gets too close to you, you should attack him by kicking or punching according to the distance between you two. If however the attacker attacks you by surprise, not giving you enough time to think, your body instinctively defends itself. This means that if you are at the point where you notice an attack coming at you, your primary instinct is to defend as opposed to attack.

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love is a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

Here’s sharing some true, realistic lessons I learnt in six decades of life after I took birth on this beautiful planet in 1960: LESSON 1 1960-70 Identifying core values early strengthens one’s inner self and gives direction to “HOW” of living. Daily conversations with my father when I was about 08 got me to define right and wrong in a simple way: Never to harm yourself or any other person even in your thoughts in any way. It gave me a ‘burden-less’ living. LESSON 2 1970-80 Don’t let your goodness be taken as your weakness by people and use you. Instead of being focused on “getting liked” by those in demand, better to spend time on self-development thro self-discipline, self-control and focus to be the best in what comes naturally to you. LESSON 3 1980-90  Whatever be the level of comfort in life, it can simply shift in one day. Life can change in the blink of an eye. Those are the moments when the work you have done on yourself will help you stand tall, confident and get to rebuild yourself. Clarity of the choice will be defining your life ahead. LESSON 4 1990-00 Persistence, confidence, commitment, passion, hard-work, dedication and devotion are all beautiful terms. Unless you add ‘Strategy’, it works NOT. In pursuit of your goal you may have to be flexible about your values. LESSON 5 2000-10 Doesn’t matter if you are MOON, if Sun doesn’t like you and stop giving you light, you are nowhere. Very important to develop lasting relationships on a “give and take” principle. Clear and candid. Period. LESSON 6 2010-20 And if you continue to live with the basic first lesson that I got in early childhood and then what I learned later of being flexible, which I chose not to, as I wanted to pursue what I thought was right, then it is equally true that life slowly and steadily turns magical. For every one person who preys on you to cut your wings, you will find 10 angels willing to share theirs. You will learn LESS IS MORE. And you will find humility holding you tight and taking you through every storm and staying firmly rooted would also mean storms passing through you. Life will just keep flowing and you will be able to create your own small beautiful and happy world. LESSON NOW: Whatever you know is only to the extent of how YOU have experienced life. More than that is a perception and an illusion what can also be termed as Your imagined reality So finally, my lessons are MINE. May not be applicable to all. If even one person is able to relate with them and choose to restart by reconsidering any WHATSs , WHYs and HOWSs, I will be happy. LAST WORD: AGE IS NOT A NUMBER! It’s a well-earned gift of experiences. Feeling blessed!

They Don’t Take Everything Personally Emotionally mature people are realistic enough to not be offended easily and can laugh at themselves and their foibles. They aren’t perfectionistic and see themselves and others as fallible human beings, doing the best they can. Taking things too personally can be a sign of either narcissism or low self-esteem. Both traits cause problems in relationships because they lead people to constantly seek reassurance from others. In addition, people who take things personally often feel that they’re being evaluated, seeing slights and criticisms where they don’t exist. This kind of defensiveness consumes relationship energy like a black hole. In contrast, emotionally mature people understand that most of us can put our foot in our mouth at times. If you say you misspoke, they won’t insist on a postmortem to uncover potential unconscious negativity toward them. They can see a social gaffe as a mistake, not a rejection. They’re realistic enough to not feel unloved just because you made a mistake.

What is the fundamental fact that remains a constant, whether overt or disguised, in all abnormally developed types of personality ? Is it not that so far as emotions are concerned such people live their outward life in terms of inner subjective factors. Their emotional relationships with their outer world are not objectively realistic. They may be intellectually objective in the matter of their correct appraisal of ways and means to their own ends, and in relation to matters that are of no private emotional significance to them. But the moment their personal needs and aims are involved they lose emotional objectivity and behave on the basis of inner mental situations. All patients live in an individual private mental world and to help them we have to discover its structure.

Managing the Neutral Zone: A Checklist Yes No   ___ ___ Have I done my best to normalize the neutral zone by explaining it as an uncomfortable time that (with careful attention) can be turned to everyone’s advantage? ___ ___ Have I redefined the neutral zone by choosing a new and more affirmative metaphor with which to describe it? ___ ___ Have I reinforced that metaphor with training programs, policy changes, and financial rewards for people to keep doing their jobs during the neutral zone? ___ ___ Am I protecting people adequately from inessential further changes? ___ ___ If I can’t protect them, am I clustering those changes meaningfully? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary policies and procedures that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary roles, reporting relationships, and organizational groupings that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I set short-range goals and checkpoints? ___ ___ Have I set realistic output objectives? ___ ___ Have I found the special training programs we need to deal successfully with the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I found ways to keep people feeling that they still belong to the organization and are valued by our part of it? And have I taken care that perks and other forms of “privilege” are not undermining the solidarity of the group? ___ ___ Have I set up one or more Transition Monitoring Teams to keep realistic feedback flowing upward during the time in the neutral zone? ___ ___ Are my people willing to experiment and take risks in intelligently conceived ventures—or are we punishing all failures? ___ ___ Have I stepped back and taken stock of how things are being done in my part of the organization? (This is worth doing both for its own sake and as a visible model for others’ similar efforts.) ___ ___ Have I provided others with opportunities to do the same thing? Have I provided them with the resources—facilitators, survey instruments, and so on—that will help them do that? ___ ___ Have I seen to it that people build their skills in creative thinking and innovation? ___ ___ Have I encouraged experimentation and seen to it that people are not punished for failing in intelligent efforts that do not pan out? ___ ___ Have I worked to transform the losses of our organization into opportunities to try doing things a new way? ___ ___ Have I set an example by brainstorming many answers to old problems—the ones that people say we just have to live with? Am I encouraging others to do the same? ___ ___ Am I regularly checking to see that I am not pushing for certainty and closure when it would be more conducive to creativity to live a little longer with uncertainty and questions? ___ ___ Am I using my time in the neutral zone as an opportunity to replace bucket brigades with integrated systems throughout the organization?

André and Jeanne soon felt nothing but blessed tenderness, maternal satisfaction, at sharing the same bed, at simply lying close together and talking before they turned back to back and went to sleep.” It was beautiful, but was it realistic? Was it a viable prospect today? Clearly, it was connected with the pleasures of the table: “Gourmandise entered their lives as a new interest, brought on by their growing indifference to the flesh, like the passion of priests who, deprived of carnal joys, quiver before delicate viands and old wines.” Certainly, in an era when a wife bought and peeled the vegetables herself, trimmed the meat, and spent hours simmering the stew, a tender and nurturing relationship could take root; the evolution of comestible conditions had caused

The closer we are to someone, the more we expect from him. We are disappointed, confused, angry, hurt, encouraged, happy, or ecstatic in our relationships according to how close our expectations meet reality. Realistic vision frees us to relate to those close to us with the same objectivity we are able to use with those who touch our life but are not intertwined with our needs.

Along with that, the Bible continually reminds us that God sends the uncomfortable grace of trial not to crush or discourage us, but to mature and refine us. As we are realistic about difficulty, that needs to be our hope.

Refining the relationship between exaggeration and realism in humor can be related to stretching a rubber band. Imagine the unstretched band is the realism, and exaggeration stretches the band. When the rubber band is stretched to capacity, several things happen at once. Stretching alters the shape of the band; exaggeration changes the perception of reality. The rubber band can be stretched a little (understatement) or a lot (overstatement). Just as tension increases in a rubber band that it is stretched, exaggeration increases tension in the audience—up to the breaking point. When you pluck a rubber band, it makes a sound. The pitch of this sound gets higher as you stretch the rubber band further. This sound can be compared to emotion in an audience. The more you stretch the rubber band, the greater the emotion in the audience. Finding the proper balance between realism and exaggeration is the ultimate test of a comedy writer’s skill. Humor only comes when the exaggeration is logical. Simply being ludicrous or audacious is not a skill. It’s amateur. Many novice stand-up comedians struggle with exaggeration. They’ll start with some realistic premise—the way women dress, picking up men in a singles bar, outsmarting the police, or advertising slogans—but then they’ll shift into fifth gear in a wild display of ludicrous fantasy that’s not well connected to the initial premise. Their material has limited success because they make the same mistake repeatedly: They disrupt the equal balance of realism and exaggeration. Outrageous doesn’t mean creative.

Most people think that money and love aren’t related topics. But allow me explain this to you in a realistic way. When someone criticizes you but doesn’t see your value, this person is trying to bargain your happiness. When someone doesn’t invest in a relationship, but instead complains about her needs and wants, this person is overpricing herself. When a woman invests more in her outer beautify than inner beauty, she is focusing on her brand, and not quality. When the cost of a relationship exceeds the quality of what you get, you are being cheated. And there’s no such thing as cost for quality, because very often the nicest people you find are also the easiest to hang out with, and the kindest. They make you feel like your life is easy despite any challenges along the way, and that you haven’t lost anything but instead gained a lot. When someone adds value to your life, well then, that person proves to be a great investment. And great investments are worth a lifetime. They require little to be maintained but give you plenty in return. You should never let go a good opportunity, in love and wealth. And if you’re smart enough to understand this, you can be in a fantastic relationship and wealthy at the same time. If you can’t, you probably undervalued yourself.

The Psalms treat depression more realistically than many of today’s popular books on Christianity and psychology. David and other psalmists often found themselves deeply depressed for various reasons. They did not, however, apologize for what they were feeling, nor did they confess it as sin. It was a legitimate part of their relationship with God. They interacted with Him through the context of their depression.2 Another

With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.

Many people generally think of it as a sincere desire to help the other person to be more realistic, behave in more constructive ways, to help them recognize others as worthwhile, unique individuals, to show that you value the relationship, or to help that person reduce self-destructive behaviors. Our motives are praiseworthy, we are trying to help the other person. Many times what you fail to recognize is that your vision of needed changes rises from your own needs and expectations. Yes, the changes may do all that is needed to make the person more effective and loveable, but the impetus is your need to have him or her be this way—not his or her need. The person did not request or seek your assistance to change, you decided it was necessary and began to work to make him or her accept your vision.

coated with unmet expectations. So, what do I do? Well, I’ve found it tremendously helpful to list the expectations I have of a relationship in which I’m feeling slighted. Then I prayerfully discern whether or not my expectations are realistic or unrealistic. And if I can’t really discern one way or the other, I ask. I ask God. I ask that person. I ask someone wise who knows both of us well.

Try to reserve judgment—as I have learned to do for the most part. Unless you’ve walked in that person’s shoes, you don’t know what you would do in any given circumstance. I was too desperately, devotedly, blindly in love to say no and move on. I understand better now why some people stay on in relationships that might not be healthy or fulfilling. There are so many things that keep you there, not the least of which is the deep, abiding love you feel for that person, the history you share, and the hope that things will get better. Today I am far more realistic, seasoned, and decidedly stronger and more independent, and I would never stay in a relationship that caused me such pain again. But