The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

by Neil Strauss

Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.

it isn’t until we start developing an honest, compassionate, and functional relationship with ourselves that we can begin to experience a healthy, loving relationship with others.

Because when a love avoidant and a love addict begin a relationship, a predictable pattern occurs: The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it’s never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.” “By outlet, you mean an affair?” Adam interrupts. “It can be,” Lorraine says. “But it can also be obsessive exercising or work or drugs or living on the edge or anything high-risk.

Or you can realize that ultimately it’s all a distraction to avoid the harsh reality that you are not connected to yourself.”

Real intelligence is when your mind and your heart connect. That’s when you see the truth so clearly and unmistakably that you don’t have to think about it.

And so I think, Bright red apple, wrong orchard—and I look away.

“Do you think there’s any truth to the saying that a man is as faithful as his options?” I ask, hoping for a small reprieve. “I don’t think that’s true,” he replies adamantly. “You’re as faithful as you decide to be if your brain is healthy. If your brain is not healthy, then you’re as faithful as your options. And we’re going to make your brain healthy.”

Sheila tells me that continuously complying with someone else’s priorities at the expense of my own is called pathological accommodation.

“We all have six core needs: emotional, social, intellectual, physical, sexual, and spiritual. And if they’re being attended to and enhanced, then you’re doing the right thing.”

Rick Rubin once told me that on their deathbeds, people don’t think about their work or their life experiences or the items remaining on their to-do list. They think about love and family.

Turn judgment into compassion and acceptance. 2. Transform shame into reassurance. 3. Change criticism to appreciation. 4. Replace blame with understanding.

For me, the best way to understand what actually transpired in any given situation is to write about it until the truth emerges.

A great lesson this taught me was that if we place ourselves in our heart to make choices in new situations, we can’t make any mistakes.