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Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. When we love children we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights—that we respect and uphold their rights.
Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another.
The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present when there is love, is annihilated by greed.
We need not witness the suffering of the many so that the few may live in a world of excessive luxury.
WE ARE ALL vulnerable. We have all been tempted. Even those of us committed to an ethic of love are sometimes tempted by greedy desires.
Committed love relationships are far more likely to become codependent when we cut off all our ties with friends to give these bonds we consider primary our exclusive
attention.
The more genuine our romantic loves the more we do not feel called upon to weaken or sever ties with friends in order to strengthen ties with romantic partners.
When it became destructive, I found it difficult to leave. I found myself accepting behavior (verbal and physical abuse) that I would not have tolerated in a friendship.
In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to
cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.
Realistically, being part of a loving community does not mean we will not face conflicts, betrayals, negative outcomes from positive actions, or bad things happening to good people. Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life-enhancing.
“I can assure you that the greatest rewards in your whole life will
come from opening your heart to those in need. The greatest blessings always come from helping.”
When anyone thinks a woman who serves “gives ’cause that’s what mothers or real women do,” they
deny her full humanity and thus fail to see the generosity inherent in her acts.
The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up.
American males—their refusal to become men: “Though they have reached adult age, they are unable to face adult feelings with responsibilities. Out of touch with their true emotions, afraid to depend on even those closest to them, self-centered and narcissistic, they hide behind masks of normalcy while feeling empty and lonely inside.”
Many of them had been raised in homes where fathers were not present.
A woman who would never submit to a child calling her abusive names and humiliating her allows such behavior from a man. The respect woman demand and uphold in the maternal-child bond is deemed not important in adult bondings if demanding respect from a man interferes with their desire to get and keep a partner.
“We cannot learn to communicate deeply until we learn to listen, to each other but also to ourselves and to God.
Listening does not simply mean we hear other
voices when they speak but that we also learn to listen to the voice of our own hearts as well as inner voices.
Getting in touch with the lovelessness within and letting that lovelessness speak its pain is one way to ...
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Many men never want to feel helpless or vulnerable. They will, at times, choose to silence a partner with violence rather than witness emotional vulnerability.
When we are committed to doing the work of love we listen even when it hurts.
Discipline and devotion are necessary to the practice of love, all the more so when relationships are just beginning.
Deep commitment does not guarantee the success of the relationship but does help more than any other factor to ensure it.
When we face pain in relationships, our first response is often to sever
bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
Pain may be the threshold they must cross to partake of love’s bliss. Running from the pain, they never know the fullness of love’s pleasure.
False notions of love teach us that it is the place where we will feel no pain, where we will be in a state of constant bliss.
As the lyrics of old-time spirituals testify, “Weeping may endure for a night but joy will come in the morning.” Acceptance of pain is part of loving practice.
“A good number of men simply decide not to commit themselves because they cannot face dealing with the emotional pain of love and the conflict it engenders.”
They are, in fact, the real sleeping beauties. We might be living in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to live again. This labor of love is futile only when the men in question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on.
We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love.
True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption.
Love saves us only if we want to be saved.
“The desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”
Women rarely choose men solely on the basis of erotic connection.
So females are socialized to be more concerned about emotional connection.
Couples who rarely or never have sex can know lifelong love.
We acknowledge its value without allowing it to become the absolute measure of intimate connection.
Enlightened women want fulfilling erotic encounters as much as men, but we ultimately prefer erotic satisfaction within
a context where there is loving, intima...
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As it stands, most men tend to be more concerned about sexual performance and sexual satisfaction than whether they are capable of giving and receiving love.
I still believe in the transformative power of love. Disappointment has not led me to close my heart.
A perfect passion happens when we meet someone who appears to have everything we have wanted to find in a partner. I say “appears” because the intensity of our connection usually blinds us.
We see what we want to see.
When we love by intention and
