Rough Patch Quotes

The best advice I can give to anyone going through a rough patch is to never be afraid to ask for help.

You're crazy. You're impossible." "I'm crazy?" He tipped my chin up and planted a quick, rough kiss on my mouth. "And I must be crazy for putting up with it.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

He tasted deeper, holding himself over me, and suddenly he was everywhere; his knee trapping my leg, his lips grazing warm, rough, sensuous. He splayed his hand at the small of my back, holding me tightly, driving me to sink my fingers deeper into him, clinging to him as if letting go would mean losing part of myself.

The definition of a true friend is not someone who swoops in when you're going through a rough patch. True friendship is when someone can appreciate your happiness - celebrate your happiness, even when she's not necessarily happy herself.

Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.

It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thing—loneliness—and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase “I am useful, even if alone” carved in stone. Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life. And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within. Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, “I’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes. Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then … … instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not … Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness. Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t. But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again. Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is ...

You go into marriage, you plow a road. You’re going to hit rough patches, and some may be rougher and last longer than others, but you’ve got choices to make. You work to smooth them out, you hold until they do, or they don’t. You stick with the road, or you get off. But you don’t do something to make it worse, don’t do something that maybe makes you feel better for the short term while it sucker punches the person you’re married to.

What all you young kids fail to remember is that the excitement and freshness of that new relationship doesn't last. Everyone-- every relationship--hits those rough patches when you argue and don't get along so well and it's so easy to be tempted to go for freshness again to feel appreciated and desired.If not ---Bam, you're miserable and getting your kicks elsewhere.But if you keep that freshness alive in your relationship you'll get through it. Mark my Words

You didn't like him, did you, Dad?" "It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else." God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive.. "You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work.

Once employed, the employed's friends are reduced to creatures that he only sees when he has a new problem, or, something new to show off.

When going through or coming out of a rough patch in life, it's important not to focus on those who did not show up for you. Be appreciative of those who rolled up their sleeves and got dirty with you.

If there was just a little more time, or a little more money, or if you could just get through this one last rough patch, it would all be clear, it would all fall into place. It’s an insatiable trap. And

She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head.

When we’re going through a rough patch, if we stay centered and stay out of fear, we can come out the other side wiser, stronger and better.

His grip on my shoulder tightens. His other hand behind my head caresses me softly and I sigh. "Touch me, Skye." His voice is rough, almost sounding like a groan.

The actual things behind the stories and behind the lyrics had a lot to do with…I hate saying depression, but there was a really rough patch in my head and really difficult time and I didn’t know why…A lot of the ghosts that appeared in the record is a metaphor for that depression at that time in my head and all the things going on in it. It’s mainly about that, and there’s little things here and there about certain people.

In the years ahead we would have rough patches, but we were determined to get through them.

Oh Jake, my love for you doesn’t stop just because there’s a rough patch in the road, or I don’t get what I want.

When you're already going through a rough patch of life; a slight wave from past thrash you down so gracefully that journey bcms an unending shore !

I am not accident prone! Gravity and I are just going through rough patch okay.

have cheated in the first place.” “Well, yeah, but—” “There’s no ‘but.’” Eve pulled open the car door, slid in. “You go into marriage, you plow a road. You’re going to hit rough patches, and some may be rougher and last longer than others, but you’ve got choices to make. You work to smooth them out, you hold until they do, or they don’t. You stick with the road, or you get off. But you don’t do something to make it worse, don’t do something that maybe makes you feel better for the short term while it sucker punches the person you’re married to.

Don't allow your pride to push you away from those who truly care for you just because you are going through a rough patch in life. That's exactly when you need them with you the most.

My aunt Bee has always said that contrary to what most people think, the definition of a true friend is not someone who swoops in when you’re going through a rough patch.” She shook her head. “Anyone can do that. True friendship, she says, is when someone can appreciate your happiness—celebrate your happiness, even—when she’s not necessarily happy herself.” She looked at me with appreciative eyes. “That’s you, Claire.

A rough patch is a celestial design to accept your sins and practice penance, there is high chance of getting an early absolution. Those who do not accept that they have done anything wrong, may get prolonged rough patch.

The idea of having a useless husband sounds like a nightmare.” She had friends who put up with that nonsense. Not her. She wanted a partner, not another child in a grown-up body. He’d always been steady. Present. Supportive. Driven. A little too set in his ways, but a loving dad and husband. As a child of divorce, he fought hard for their marriage. They’d hit rough patches and lived through a painful year filled with yelling and disappointment when they both hated their jobs and their expenses didn’t allow for a change.

'You came to mean more and more to me, and I could no sooner have turned away from you than stop the earth spinning. I thought, if this ends with me broken, so be it. But as every day passed, I thought: he won't break me, he loves me and one day, he'll tell me. But you didn't because you don't.'

Once we know that something turned out all right, that we navigated a rough patch more or less intact, it becomes harder to pity our younger self or remember the grief and confusion, the dread of the disaster that didn’t happen, the panic of the deer frozen in the headlights of the car that stopped in time.

It’s not the type of thing Bengali wives do. Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband’s name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke’s name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as “Are you listening to me?

Our inability to imagine the length of the rest of existence magnifies our problems.

To tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance," wrote the psychologist Jerome Bruner. Every story we tell, of marriage or life involves judgement about the salient facts, the details to amplify, the impression we wish to leave. The techniques that great storytellers use to draw us in are not unlike the ones that intimate partners use with each other to promote fruitful conversation. Both ease the listener into their story by speaking in terms of possibilities rather than certainties. When one partner wants to invite the other to consider his perspective, he signals his belief that he doesn't have sole access to the truth...In doing so he invites curiosity...Trouble couples insist their partner's meanings are unambiguous.

This book is my hate letter to standardized testing. It’s also my love letter to neuroscience, Star Wars, women in STEM, friendships that hit rough patches but then try their best to bounce back, research assistants, interdisciplinary scientific collaborations, Elle Woods, ShitAcademicsSay, mermaids, hummingbird feeders, people who struggle with working out, and cats.

As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners, wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor, perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle of writing Antony and Cleopatra — But Shakespeare did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal. Smell remained. Now that they were established in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr. Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs. Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell. He threaded his path through main streets and back streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out, up and down, where they beat brass, where they bake bread, where the women sit combing their hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red stains on the pavement, where leather smells and harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and spit and dice — he ran in and out, always with his nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or with his nose in the air vibrating with the aroma. He slept in this hot patch of sun — how sun made the stone reek! he sought that tunnel of shade — how acid shade made the stone smell! He devoured whole bunches of ripe grapes largely because of their purple smell; he chewed and spat out whatever tough relic of goat or macaroni the Italian housewife had thrown from the balcony — goat and macaroni were raucous smells, crimson smells. He followed the swooning sweetness of incense into the violet intricacies of dark cathedrals; and, sniffing, tried to lap the gold on the window- stained tomb. Nor was his sense of touch much less acute. He knew Florence in its marmoreal smoothness and in its gritty and cobbled roughness. Hoary folds of drapery, smooth fingers and feet of stone received the lick of his tongue, the quiver of his shivering snout. Upon the infinitely sensitive pads of his feet he took the clear stamp of proud Latin inscriptions. In short, he knew Florence as no human being has ever known it; as Ruskin never knew it or George Eliot either.

That was true, Iris would sometimes think, about marriage: it was only a boat, too. A wooden boat, difficult to build, even more difficult to maintain, whose beauty derived at least in part from its unlikelihood. Long ago the pragmatic justifications for both marriage and wooden-boat building had been lost or superseded. Why invest countless hours, years, and dollars in planing and carving, gluing and fastening, caulking and fairing, when a fiberglass boat can be had at a fraction of the cost? Why struggle to maintain love and commitment over decades when there were far easier ways to live, ones that required no effort or attention to prevent corrosion and rot? Why continue to pour your heart into these obsolete arts? Because their beauty, the way they connect you to your history and to the living world, justifies your efforts. A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance. At first your notions of your life with another were no more substantial than a pattern laid down in plywood. Then year by year you constructed the frame around the form, and began layering memories, griefs, and small triumphs like strips of veneer planking bent around the hull of everyday routine. You sanded down the rough edges, patched the misunderstandings, faired the petty betrayals. Sometimes you sprung a leak. You fell apart in rough weather or were smashed on devouring rocks. But then, as now, in the teeth of a storm, when it seemed like all was lost, the timber swelled, the leak sealed up, and you found that your craft was, after all, sea-kindly.

I drove out of Dartmouth and after a while Start Bay emerged out of the brightening gloom like the end of a set of parentheses in a book about the natural world. Inside the parentheses was a story about the sea. Outside them, the land: green, red and brown fields, and hills curling over the landscape. I saw small, delicate clumps of snowdrops, big rough patches of gorse, and along the thin road, houses with yellow roses and mimosa growing in their gardens.

These books have really helped me get through some rough patches in my life... So if you want to disagree with me, that's fine, but please do so in a respectful manner. (On anyone's posts for that matter) You never know what someone may be going through. I was recently called an idiot and other names that I won't repeat because I try to keep my language clean, simply because I was defending some other people who were being attacked for loving the Keeper of the Lost Cities. And I know for a fact that many people (myself included) go to books to escape their everyday life. I know of a few people who have read a book that helped them through depression because the characters in that book found a way through it. I've heard about people who were thinking about suicide and then part of a book helped them realize that it wasn't the answer. Books can save lives, as well as any other hobby. So feel free to share your opinion, but please don't attack people for theirs, no matter what it is.

Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband’s name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke’s name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as “Are you listening to me?

After God, who is the central core pillar to any Christian marriage, there are four important marital relationship foundations. These are: * Self-Esteem - if you don't love yourself you will find it almost impossible to accept love from others. * Friendship - a strong friendship will sustain your marriage even when feelings of love are harder to find. * Laughter - it will improve your quality of life, your health and your relationships * Romance - feeling close to your partner can be the glue which holds your relationship together through the rough patches, but the absence of romance causes a void that problems will easily fill.

I’d go so far as to say that, even when the offending behaviors don’t seem to be budging, what makes the biggest difference between hope and hopelessness is whether partners demonstrate self-awareness and self-responsibility—acknowledging their impact on each other, and taking responsibility for trying to do something different.

In a lot of ways home improvement is like marriage. It’s not glamorous. It can take a lot of hard work and effort. There are days it feels like it might be easier to burn the whole thing to the ground and start all over again. Then you remember how much you love the house or your husband and you recommit yourself to what it takes to see the whole thing through. Even when it might involve paintbrushes and compromise and sanding and scraping all the rough edges. And when you look back on a tough patch a few months after the worst has passed, you don’t remember all the hard work and the tears. You just have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve made something beautiful.

. . . what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search.

Look, all your reasons are really stupid,” I say. “People in relationships need each other like I need you. I know it’s exhausting taking care of me, and I’m sorry. I can try to give you a break, and we can use this summer to get back on track. I really think this is just a rough patch.” Jamie shakes his head. I finally turn and look at him. He’s looking at his hands again. “So that’s it? You’re not even going to try? After all this time together?” “I can’t do it anymore, Autumn.” “You said you would love me forever.” I’m not going to let him off easy. “I do love you, just not that way anymore,” Jamie says. “You still love me,” I say. “You just can’t feel it right now. Sometimes that happens to me, and I just wait and it always comes back. I don’t break up with you. I just give it time.

Exaggerating my partner's position allows me to fight with him, rather than ask myself the hard questions about what I believe we can afford. I delegate certain attribute to my partner -for example, recasting his reasonable concern as his "negative" approach to money- while claiming other attributes for myself- I spend as a way to "stand up for myself" in the face of my partner's "control" or to express my "sense of adventure in the face of my partner's" "inertia

A long suburb of red brick houses -some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace. On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses.

Connor dipped his head and kissed from her neck to her collarbone, and down her arm as he slipped the sark off her shoulder revealing the satiny skin beneath. When he got to her fingers, he nipped her ring finger and Mackenzie gasped as he drew it into his mouth and sucked. He raised his eyes back to hers and trapped her gaze in his own. Connor slid her sark down her body and Mackenzie was helpless to do anything but stare into the dark blue pools of molten desire his eyes had become. It was a heady feeling to know that she was the reason his eyes were so dark; she had never before felt so powerful. He wanted her and this time she knew what to do. Mackenzie unwrapped his plaid from the chieftain brooch and pushed it off his shoulder. Connor held perfectly still and let it fall to the floor with Mackenzie’s pile of clothes. Next Mackenzie dragged his shirt over his head; it too joined the growing pile of clothing. Mackenzie couldn’t help but marvel at his hard body with all its scars hinting at the power and danger this man carried. She let her fingers trail down from his chest to the patch of hair on his stomach, and lower still. She could feel his muscles clench and his breath stop as she wrapped her fingers around his erection. She quickly found his rhythm and knelt down to press her lips to his lower abs. Trailing her mouth down to where her hand was, she gently licked the tip. She felt a thrill of satisfaction as his hands gripped her shoulders and as her mouth took him in, his fingers tightened. She used both her hand and her mouth to pleasure Connor. He molded a hand to the nape of her neck, holding her in place. She was becoming bolder with her free hand, exploring what made his muscles quiver and his breath hitch, when Connor pulled her roughly up and to him, crushing her lips with his. He pressed her back against the cold wall and lifted one of her long legs, hitching it around his hip. She was tall enough that he didn’t have to lift her. He slipped inside her and Mackenzie reveled in the groan wrenched from him. This was how she liked Connor; out of control. He pushed into her again and again until they were both panting, and Mackenzie was moaning with every breath. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Oh God Connor, I’m so close.” “Just let go, love.” With her back pressed against the cold wall and the heat from Connor’s body warming her, Mackenzie shuddered with the force of her orgasm and she melted into Connor’s arms as he spent himself in her.

Development in adulthood, and in marriage, requires using the past to animate the present. We lose many things in life. We lose people we love, our younger selves, our children's babyhoods, and the crazy-in-love phase with our partner. We mourn the losses and keep the memories and past selves alive in us-through rituals, reminiscence, and loving action toward othres, investing in the future- is one of the greatest gifts of mature adulthood. From midlife onward, perceiving oneself as generative gives people not only a sense of meaning, but appears to relate to greater health and longer health.

When we’re self-aware, we reflect on the source and effect of our emotions. When we’re self-responsible, we face our impact on the other person and commit to adjusting our behavior. People who want to stay married can live with a lot—a lot of limits, a lot of annoyances, even a lot of deprivations. But feeling they are being heard is one of the basic requirements for feeling loved. And the flip side is also true: not feeling heard is what people find most corrosive to their sense of trust and potential in marriage. Self-awareness means we’re listening to ourselves. Self-responsibility means we’re listening and responding to the other.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day— And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes. Amen

Even when a marriage is basically good people are not always happy. Marriage is a crucible for becoming a more mature, compassionate person. It offers an unflinchingly up-close-and-personal example of how we treat another human being. We see our minds in action, both our worst tendencies and our best. In this light how can we even judge the viability of our marriages without making sure we've gotten enough sleep, exercised, eaten right, and developed some means of reflection, prayer, or meditation? Our emotions and bodies whip us around, and we're so often mystified as to what's causing a given mood. It's so easy to blame the person at hand, which in marriage, unfortunately is often one's spouse.

In a couple allowing each other aloneness is part of allowing each other to explore, have interests, and play. One puts oneself in the other's place through sympathetic imagination. Each person recognizes that "my partner has to do this to be who (s)he is". Each can tolerate the idea "you will forget about me, will forget I'm alive" for some stretch of time, and each accepts, supports, and respects that. At the same time, they share an understanding: "I need you to come back and remember I'm alive and that I need things from you". In a good relationship we are constantly calibrating and adjusting the elastic band of distance and closeness. Sometimes it's pulled tighter and sometimes it's more slack. But the security built over time allows for solitude and immersive experience.

He made them take the rough cotton sacks from their beds and run down the tower’s numerous steps and across the courtyard to the stable, where they filled them with straw amidst a flurry of cane strokes. Vaelin was sure the cane fell on his back more than the others and suspected Sollis of forcing him towards the older, damper patches of straw. When the sacks were full he whipped them back up to the tower, where they placed them on the wooden frames that would serve as their beds. Then it was another run down to the vaults beneath the keep. He made them line up, breath steaming in the chill air, gasps echoing loudly. The vaults seemed vast, brick archways disappearing into the darkness on every side. Vaelin’s fear began to rekindle as he stared into the shadows, bottomless and pregnant with menace

When you can’t feel or act in a way that connects you to your bigger-picture goal of warmth and harmony, it’s worth attempting a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” strategy, focusing on the in-the-moment possibilities for awareness, kindness, and responsiveness. A finer-grained attention to what you are each doing to cause bad interactions can enable you to notice what each of you could do differently and gently lead you away from dwelling in a miasma of emotional negativity that toxifies the whole relational atmosphere. Attention to process, not outcome; awareness in the moment; tuning in to your own emotional weather—these are valuable mindfulness techniques under any circumstances, but they are particularly important to creating the moments of repair or attunement that can then promote a more positive big picture. As

Jack took two steps towards the couch and then heard his daughter’s distressed wails, wincing. “Oh, right. The munchkin.” He instead turned and headed for the stairs, yawning and scratching his messy brown hair, calling out, “Hang on, chubby monkey, Daddy’s coming.” Jack reached the top of the stairs. And stopped dead. There was a dragon standing in the darkened hallway. At first, Jack swore he was still asleep. He had to be. He couldn’t possibly be seeing correctly. And yet the icy fear slipping down his spine said differently. The dragon stood at roughly five feet tall once its head rose upon sighting Jack at the other end of the hallway. It was lean and had dirty brown scales with an off-white belly. Its black, hooked claws kneaded the carpet as its yellow eyes stared out at Jack, its pupils dilating to drink him in from head to toe. Its wings rustled along its back on either side of the sharp spines protruding down its body to the thin, whip-like tail. A single horn glinted sharp and deadly under the small, motion-activated hallway light. The only thing more noticeable than that were the many long, jagged scars scored across the creature’s stomach, limbs, and neck. It had been hunted recently. Judging from the depth and extent of the scars, it had certainly killed a hunter or two to have survived with so many marks. “Okay,” Jack whispered hoarsely. “Five bucks says you’re not the Easter Bunny.” The dragon’s nostrils flared. It adjusted its body, feet apart, lips sliding away from sharp, gleaming white teeth in a warning hiss. Mercifully, Naila had quieted and no longer drew the creature’s attention. Jack swallowed hard and held out one hand, bending slightly so his six-foot-two-inch frame was less threatening. “Look at me, buddy. Just keep looking at me. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. Why don’t you just come this way, huh?” He took a single step down and the creature crept forward towards him, hissing louder. “That’s right. This way. Come on.” Jack eased backwards one stair at a time. The dragon let out a warning bark and followed him, its saliva leaving damp patches on the cream-colored carpet. Along the way, Jack had slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed 9-1-1, hoping he had just enough seconds left in the reptile’s waning patience. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” “Listen to me carefully,” Jack said, not letting his eyes stray from the dragon as he fumbled behind him for the handle to the sliding glass door. He then quickly gave her his address before continuing. “There is an Appalachian forest dragon in my house. Get someone over here as fast as you can.” “We’re contacting a retrieval team now, sir. Please stay calm and try not to make any loud noises or sudden movements–“ Jack had one barefoot on the cool stone of his patio when his daughter Naila cried for him again. The dragon’s head turned towards the direction of upstairs. Jack dropped his cell phone, grabbed a patio chair, and slammed it down on top of the dragon’s head as hard as he could.

This book has pushed back against the randomness thesis, emphasizing instead the skill in venture capital. It has done so for four reasons. First, the existence of path dependency does not actually prove that skill is absent. Venture capitalists need skill to enter the game: as the authors of the NBER paper say, path dependency can only influence which among the many skilled players gets to be the winner. Nor is it clear that path dependency explains why some skilled operators beat other ones. The finding that a partnership’s future IPO rate rises by 1.6 percentage points is not particularly strong, and the history recounted in these pages shows that path dependency is frequently disrupted.[5] Despite his powerful reputation, Arthur Rock was unsuccessful after his Apple investment. Mayfield was a leading force during the 1980s; it too faded. Kleiner Perkins proves that you can dominate the Valley for a quarter of a century and then decline precipitously. Accel succeeded early, hit a rough patch, and then built itself back. In an effort to maintain its sense of paranoia and vigilance, Sequoia once produced a slide listing numerous venture partnerships that flourished and then failed. “The Departed,” it called them. The second reason to believe in skill lies in the origin story of some partnerships. Occasionally a newcomer breaks into the venture elite in such a way that skill obviously does matter. Kleiner Perkins became a leader in the business because of Tandem and Genentech. Both companies were hatched from within the KP office and actively shaped by Tom Perkins; there was nothing lucky about this. Tiger Global and Yuri Milner invented the art of late-stage venture capital. They had a genuinely novel approach to tech investing; they offered much more than the equivalent of another catchy tune competing against others. Paul Graham’s batch-processing method at Y Combinator offered an equally original approach to seed-stage investing. A clever innovation, not random fortune, explains Graham’s place in venture history.

Why did you come? Oh, I know what you are going to say. You felt that, cost what it might, you had to see me again, just once. You could not resist the urge to take away with you one last memory, which you could cherish down the lonely years. Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel.” The name was new to me. “Rudel?” “The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge.” I shook my head. “Never met him, I’m afraid. Pal of yours?” “He lived in the Middle ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli.” I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean. “For years he loved her, and at last could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore.” “Not feeling so good?” I said, groping. “Rough crossing?” “He was dying. Of love.” “Oh, ah.” “They bore him into the Lady Melisande’s presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out and touch her hand. Then he died.” She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued. “Terrific”, I said, feeling that I had to say something, though personally I didn’t think the story a patch on the one about the travelling salesman and the farmer’s daughter. Different, of course, if one had known the chap.

Clingmans Dome in the middle of the park. Then, it’s downhill to Virginia, and people have told me Virginia is a cakewalk. I’ll learn soon enough that “easy” trail beyond the Smoky Mountains is as much a fantasy as my dream lunch with pizza…uh, I mean Juli, but for now I’ve convinced myself all will be well once I get through the Smokies. I leave Tray Mountain Shelter at 1:00 with ten miles to go. I’ve eaten the remainder of my food. I’ve been hiking roughly two miles per hour. Downhill is slower due to my sore knee. I need to get to Hiawassee by 6:00 p.m., the check-in deadline at Blueberry Patch Hostel, where my mail drop is waiting.5 I have little margin, so I decide to push for a while. I down a couple of Advil and “open it up” for the first time this trip. In the next hour I cover 3.5 miles. Another 1.5 miles and I am out of water, since I skipped all the side trails leading to streams. Five miles to go, and I’m running out of steam. Half the strands of muscle in my legs have taken the rest of the day off, leaving the other half to do all the work. My throat is dry. Less than a mile to go, a widening stream parallels the trail. It is nearing 6:00, but I can handle the thirst no longer. There is a five-foot drop down an embankment to the stream. Hurriedly I drop my pack and camera case, which I have clipped over the belt of my pack. The camera starts rolling down the embankment, headed for the stream. I lunge for it and miss. It stops on its own in the nook of a tree root. I have to be more careful. I’m already paranoid about losing or breaking gear. Every time I resume hiking after a rest, I stop a few steps down the trail and look back for anything I may have left behind. There’s nothing in my pack that I don’t need. Finally, I’m

Mrs Vane glanced at her [daughter], and with one of those false theatrical gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her arms. At this moment the door opened, and a young lad with rough brown hair came into the room… Mrs Vane fixed her eyes on him, and intensified the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the tableau was interesting. ‘You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think,’ said the lad, with a good-natured grumble… James Vane looked into his sister’s face with tenderness. ‘I want you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don’t suppose I shall ever see this horrid London again. I am sure I don’t want to.’ ‘My son, don’t say such dreadful things,’ murmured Mrs Vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation… ‘Come, Sibyl,’ said her brother, impatiently. He hated his mother’s affectations… He was conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother’s nature, and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl’s happiness. Children being by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them… After some time, he thrust away his plate, and put his head in his hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up, and went to the door. Then he turned back, and looked at her. Their eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him. ‘Mother, I have something to ask you,’ he said. Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. She made no answer. ‘Tell me the truth. I have a right to know. Were you married to my father?’ She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment, the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed in some measure it was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.

To give you a sense of the sheer volume of unprocessed information that comes up the spinal cord into the thalamus, let’s consider just one aspect: vision, since many of our memories are encoded this way. There are roughly 130 million cells in the eye’s retina, called cones and rods; they process and record 100 million bits of information from the landscape at any time. This vast amount of data is then collected and sent down the optic nerve, which transports 9 million bits of information per second, and on to the thalamus. From there, the information reaches the occipital lobe, at the very back of the brain. This visual cortex, in turn, begins the arduous process of analyzing this mountain of data. The visual cortex consists of several patches at the back of the brain, each of which is designed for a specific task. They are labeled V1 to V8. Remarkably, the area called V1 is like a screen; it actually creates a pattern on the back of your brain very similar in shape and form to the original image. This image bears a striking resemblance to the original, except that the very center of your eye, the fovea, occupies a much larger area in V1 (since the fovea has the highest concentration of neurons). The image cast on V1 is therefore not a perfect replica of the landscape but is distorted, with the central region of the image taking up most of the space. Besides V1, other areas of the occipital lobe process different aspects of the image, including: •  Stereo vision. These neurons compare the images coming in from each eye. This is done in area V2. •  Distance. These neurons calculate the distance to an object, using shadows and other information from both eyes. This is done in area V3. •  Colors are processed in area V4. •  Motion. Different circuits can pick out different classes of motion, including straight-line, spiral, and expanding motion. This is done in area V5. More than thirty different neural circuits involved with vision have been identified, but there are probably many more. From the occipital lobe, the information is sent to the prefrontal cortex, where you finally “see” the image and form your short-term memory. The information is then sent to the hippocampus, which processes it and stores it for up to twenty-four hours. The memory is then chopped up and scattered among the various cortices. The point here is that vision, which we think happens effortlessly, requires billions of neurons firing in sequence, transmitting millions of bits of information per second. And remember that we have signals from five sense organs, plus emotions associated with each image. All this information is processed by the hippocampus to create a simple memory of an image. At present, no machine can match the sophistication of this process, so replicating it presents an enormous challenge for scientists who want to create an artificial hippocampus for the human brain.

loneliness every day, day in and day out. Eventually, I come to thick snow and need to put on my snow boots so I can drudge through these rough patches. Never, have I felt this avalanche of snowfall on my head as I have tonight. I truly have no one. I am truly am alone.

Jack,” she said, snuggled up against him. “I hate that I hurt you.” He buried his face in her hair and inhaled the sweet scent. “Let’s not talk about that anymore. It’s behind us. We have a lot in front of us.” “Would it be a good idea for me to go to Joey for a little while? Give you some space? Try to get my head together?” He rose over her and looked into her eyes. “Don’t, Mel. Don’t run just because we hit a rough patch. We’ll work through this.” “You sure?” “Mel,” he said hoarsely, his voice a mere whisper, “you have my baby inside you. I have to be a part of that. Come on…” She fought the tears that threatened. “I know it must be hard to deal with an emotional basket case like me.” He smiled at her and said, “I’ve heard that pregnant women get like that.” “I think I’m just like that, period.” “Marry me,” he said. She touched his beautiful face. “You don’t have to.” “Melinda, six months ago we were two people without attachments. Two people who had accepted we would never have any—and that we’d never have families. Now we have it all. We have each other and a baby. A baby we both want. Let’s not screw this up.” “Are you sure?” “I’ve never been more sure about anything. I want this. If you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere you want to go.” “But Jack, you love it here!” “Don’t you realize I love you more? I need you in my life. You and our baby. God, Mel—I don’t care where that happens. As long as it happens.” “Jack,” she said in a whisper. “What if you change your mind? What if something happens? You have to remember, I never thought anything terrible would happen to—” He put a finger on her lips, stopping her. He didn’t want to hear his name. Not now. “Shh,” he said. “I want you to trust me. You know you’re safe with me.” *

While Telly was all enthralled into the shoes, she did not notice that I was behind her on one knee. When she turned around quickly and saw the ring in my hand, she immediately dropped the shoes and covered her face. “Baby,” I cleared my throat. I grabbed her hand as she used the other to wipe away her tears. “Shantel, everything about us feels so right. Since the first day that we decided we were going to be together, it’s been us against the world. I never had to question your love for me and I know that I give you no reason to question mine. We’ve recently experienced some rough patches, but it’s nothing that we cannot get past. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” I asked with tears pouring from my eyes. “Yes! Yes, baby! I would love to be your wife!” she yelled as I placed the ring on her finger. Standing up, we shared a passionate kiss that escalated real fast. “Baby,

Other times me and Bernadette talked about the oddness of the world and how there were just enough good times to make the rough patches easier.

The middle [those rough patches that come before the completion of our milestones] is only a temporal place, never settle there or cut corners to get out!

Not long after this attempt, the issue arose again. A conference on November 8 instructed Joseph Smith to review the commandments and 'correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the holy Spirit.' Correcting 'errors' in language supposedly spoken by God again raised the question of authenticity. If from God, how could the language be corrected? Correction implied Joseph's human mind had introduced errors; if so, were the revelations really his productions? The editing process uncovered Joseph's anomalous assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God's language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the Prophet. The revealed preface to the Book of Commandments specified that the language of the revelations was Joseph Smith's: 'These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.' They were couched in language suitable to Joseph's time. The idioms, the grammar, even the tone had to be combrehensible to 1830s Americans. Recognizing the pliability of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations 'by the Holy Spirit,' making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wording to clarify meaning. The words were both his and God's.

In every collection of 10^10^122 cosmic patches, we thus expect there to be, on average, one patch that looks just like ours. That is, in every region of space that's roughly 10^10^122 meters across, there should be a cosmic patch that replicates ours-one that contains you, the earth, the galaxy, and everything else that inhabits our cosmic horizon.

Amber emerged from behind the screen. But it was not Amber who stood before her. Instead, it was a smudge-faced slave girl. A tattoo sprawled across one wind-reddened cheek. A crusty sore encompassed half her upper lip and her left nostril. Her dirty hair was pulling free from a scruffy braid. Her shirt was rough cotton and her bare feet peeked out from under her patched skirts. A dirty bandage bound one of her ankles. Rough canvas work gloves had replaced the lacy ones Amber habitually wore.

Primer of Love [Lesson 56] ROMEO (taking JULIET’s hand): If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. ~ Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, Act 1. Scene 5. Lesson 56) Gently kiss the rough spots -- don't try and hammer them out. All relationships have rough patches. These delicate times require you be at your best TLC behavior. Your relationship's future hangs precariously in the balance. You must master the art of walking on eggshells or the yolk will be all over you. Swallow your pride, listen, pretend listen. Even if you don't 'get it' say 'I understand'. This too shall pass -- if you're not an idiot.

Labouvie-Vief studies the life course and has identified a midlife tendency she calls the “de-repression of emotions.” As young adults, we may be eager to adopt the standards and customs we associate with adulthood, but as life progresses, we become less interested in conformity, and more interested in change and transformation. Still,

de-repression” isn’t all about cutting loose. It’s a much more complex process, in which people begin to revisit their emotional life and history in new ways. Through self-reflection, people become more fully aware of the “self and others as truly complex beings” who are “combining, if not reconciling, in themselves many opposing affects in sometimes tragic fashion.” Midlife brings on a greater awareness of our “inner states, in which conflicting feelings may war with one another.” We may feel disturbed and disoriented by the conflict. But dealing with our feelings through a frantic transformation negates the need to come to a new and fuller sense of integration.

And the larger goal in couples, if you think about it, is maintaining a sense of closeness and friendship.

Yet without her taking steps to guide him, he may not know how to discover her most erotically alluring self. In these situations, neither partner takes the risks that would lead to discovery, and they both retreat to their own lonely, disempowered corners.

Through metacognition, we understand that subjective reality is not objective reality; that our perception of reality, and other people’s perception of reality, are colored by our respective desires, beliefs, and goals.

But in principle, mindfulness is a useful technique for cultivating nonjudgmental awareness of our moment-to-moment perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.

The people who can’t circle back and think about what happened tend to get stuck in their negative emotional reactions. They become lost in absorbing negative states that feed on themselves. They don’t behave with each other’s best interests at heart. They don’t behave in their own best interests, either. They self-destructively redefine their own best interests as not letting the other person off the hook. In that state of mind, they are incapable of accessing the thought “Is my partner my friend or my enemy? Overall, (s)he’s my friend, and if I treat him/her nicely, I am likely to repair this painful moment and restore good feeling.

Insisting one’s partner apologize is often an attempt to find evidence of these attributes. Although it’s a blunt instrument, trying to get an apology is a way of saying, “I don’t yet have faith that you’re fully aware of your own behavior in this bad interaction. Until I feel you are taking some responsibility for your part in it, I can’t trust you.” In practice, the problem with such communications is how often their stealth message seems to be “I won’t even talk to you until you admit that my bad feelings are all your fault.” Over time, it becomes unbearable

to disengage when things get hot, and giving each other the needed space in a loving and nonpunitive way. When we do these things, we feel attuned to and want to attune to each other. When we attune to each other, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and trust in each other’s good intentions, then we continue to act as friends. It’s a virtuous circle.

As young adults, we may be eager to adopt the standards and customs we associate with adulthood, but as life progresses, we become less interested in conformity, and more interested in change and transformation. Still,

Metacognition is the ability to recognize that our thoughts are thoughts, and not a direct representation of reality. When faced with an angry mother, a child who has achieved metacognition can replace the idea “I am a bad person” with the idea “Mommy is treating me like I am a bad person, but sometimes she’s been wrong about things in the past.” When a wife employs metacognition, she can move from the thought “My husband is a son of a bitch” to “My husband can say mean things sometimes and it’s not okay, but I also know he’s extremely anxious in this moment

peace and tranquillity is to take all the blame. Any time you demand (or, better, request) an apology, it’s hugely important to take responsibility for your own part first. And if you believe you had no part? That’s your clue that some self-reflection is in order.

Heartfelt apologies are enormously meaningful to people. They are an essential aspect of repair. But when they work, it’s because they are based on something even more fundamental: understanding.

I’ve said we’re more likely to fulfill our desires for emotional closeness with our partner if we’re compassionate and caretaking toward our own emotions. A

People are after a more elusive experience of seeing themselves and their partner in a different, more erotic light. To

, venues, playacting—the emotional atmosphere has to allow for discovery and play.

One useful starting point is to stop dumping on our “childlike” emotions. They are the wellspring of our desire to connect and our need to be close. The problem is that we spend energy judging and blaming ourselves and each other for these emotions, instead of becoming as skilled as possible in expressing them. We can actually cultivate the needed capacities and skills. Mainstream psychology refers to these capacities as “emotional regulation,” broadly defined as the strategies people use to “influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions.” We regulate emotions through a variety of different methods, but two of the most adaptive ones—metacognition and mindfulness—rely on reflective functioning, or what I’ve called the feeling-with-and-thinking-about process.

Especially for women, it’s appealing and inspirational to hear a clarion voice calling for our right to self-actualization, given the millennia of female oppression. Until shockingly recently, and even still today, the relation of the sexes has reliably meant the silencing of female identity, desire, and goals. Even in the precincts of enlightenment and privilege, women often feel that we’ve handed over our entire minds to caring for others. We understandably feel put-upon, deprived, and resentful. Scholars provide ample evidence of the costs of workplace bias, and the corrosive effects on relationships of gendered divisions of labor. Getting in touch with our anger is a first step to positive change. But our challenge is to work toward solving the problems in the actual relationships in front of us. We reclaim genuine space for our identities not by rushing headlong into simplistic remedies, but by engaging in the less glamorous spadework of paying attention to our feelings, clarifying what matters to us, asserting our point of view, and negotiating for change. There

If we accept that midlife development involves the dual psychological challenges of deepening inward and expanding outward, then

devices. Deepening inward is not solely about excavating suppressed feelings and expressing them. It’s not simply about throwing off the shackles of outward roles or the “inner custodian.” It is about coming to a new, more satisfying relationship between conflicting desires and goals. Our desires, our conscience, and everything in between—they are all our own. We each struggle to reconcile our own conflicts in a livable way. Stories that off-load responsibility—Jim’s first wife is a semifrigid slob, after all, and Anna’s husband is a couch potato—encourage a self-serving tendency to attribute the “problem” to others and reserve the “solution” for ourselves.

If the first thing you do on hitting a rough patch with someone you love is to make personal attacks, you still've a lot to learn about relationships.

When a man wails like that you know it’s all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year. As Roy howled, my fingers kept worrying a rough patch of skin beneath my chin, a souvenir of scar tissue. When

One of my friends at work called these events “LFTs,” or “Look-Forward-Tos.” Everyone needed them, she said: something fun in the future to plan for, especially when you’re going through a rough patch.

Sex and attachment are both expressed in relationships, and both take place in our bodies. In long-term relationships, their common pathway is a trusting, pleasurable emotional flow. Whether couples can create that flow hinges not only on what goes on between partners, but also what goes on within each person. Feeling close with your partner, in love or in sex, has more to do with your own psychology than you might initially think.

Neither could see that their difficulties accepting and caring for their own emotions lay at the heart of their bitter blame of their spouse for not doing so. Diana’s criticism of Stephen for being “oversensitive” expresses a criticism she continuously, if unconsciously, levels against herself. If she felt less critical toward her own dependency, she might be less judgmental toward his. If she didn’t feel such acute shame at her own wish to be indulged, she would spend less time shaming Stephen. So we arrive at still another turn of complexity: Diana’s recoil from affirming Stephen’s lovableness mirrors an internal move directed toward herself. Little is more anti-erotic than shame, so Diana’s criticism doubtless inhibits her own capacity for excitement, as well as Stephen’s. Escaping such patterns is as much a matter of self-acceptance as accepting the other. “Mutual affirmation” includes reinstating both our partner and ourselves as lovable people.

When we express our body-based needs and desires with our partner, we take a risk. We want to be treated as lovable, to feel understood and valued, yet we also risk being ignored, rejected, or simply misread. These risks come up in any marriage, any day. It’s in the nature of being human that we never get over wanting to be affirmed as lovable and never stop feeling hurt when we aren’t. The astonishing yet normal reality of marriage is that we never feel cared for once and for all. The reservoir of goodwill needs to be replenished through loving words and actions. And if emotional communication works well, it can be replenished. This is the peculiar, hopeful truth at the heart of every meaningful human attachment, including marriage.

How can we move more smoothly between mature and “childlike” positions without grinding the gears excessively, or busting the gearshift altogether? How do we endure when strong emotions breed accusations and irrational statements, then repair and really listen to each other’s point of view? How can I think while staying connected to my feelings, and feel while staying connected to my thoughts? How can I struggle with all these things and simultaneously give you the opportunity to do so too?

When I ask them, “What are you most concerned about?” their answers all revolve around the same concerns: “How can we stay connected? How can we communicate so that we stay close? How can we make sure the baby doesn’t replace our bond?

I tell couples that the single most important thing they can do to stay connected is to hold on to the feeling of wanting to stay connected. Viewing the sweep from first pregnancy to middle age, I’ve concluded that the most significant risk of new parenthood is that couples will stop taking their own emotional needs seriously enough. They’ll let their needs slide, out of the best of intentions, only to realize in midlife that their fuel tanks are empty.

In a research study entitled “The Rested Relationship: Sleep Benefits Marital Evaluations,” the authors found, unsurprisingly, that “spouses were more satisfied” with their relationship “on days after which they had slept for longer periods of time.

The deft and gentle handling of our needs is what enables us to satisfy both our individual desires and our loving marital intentions.

If both people could catch themselves at these critical moments, turn toward their spouse, and seek the closeness they long for, the descent into marital disillusionment could be interrupted. If they could accept and tune into their own and their partner’s vulnerable needs and wants, without covering them over with bossing or blaming, the public health impact could be huge. Turning toward each other, no matter how fumbling, draws people closer, especially if they manage to recognize and admit their own role in whatever the problem was and genuinely apologize for causing pain. If they turn toward each other, couples stay in touch with their desire to be close, rather than insidiously