The Men on My Couch Quotes

“The truth is, no man is my savior, my Jesus, my Buddha, or my mama. He is just a man.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Talking with men about what kind of man they wanted to be in a relationship helped me to identify the important questions women should ask themselves when looking for a man. How does he deal with emotion? Can he manage anger and sadness, or will he blow up or stuff it down? Will he act out and attack, or withdraw? How does he deal with stress, because life is full of that, and women should know that the man with whom they share their lives can make it through with them. Can he be comfortable with love, with giving and receiving? Can there be mutual support, each being the other’s rock and safe place? Can he maintain his love when she frustrates him and things are difficult between them? Can their love not be the place where they lose themselves and their individual voices, but the place where they find them?”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Honey, if you’re bored, that means you’re boring.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“No wrinkle would steal my sparkle. I would look at myself in the mirror, not at the lines in my face. I’d”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Loving is more than just feelings. It’s a skill.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Women are incredibly powerful to men. In fact, women are so powerful that it’s overwhelming. Men need women to survive emotionally: our approval, our support, and our encouragement, all of which enables them to flourish in the world, to feel confident. Women’s nurturing and comfort help the men in their lives to feel safe and grounded.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Yes, great looks will get a woman’s attention, but in the end she wants to be the pretty one.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Honey, if you're bored, that means you're boring”
― David Rensin, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“That had been one of those life-changing moments, a psychological cataclysm, when the trauma of betrayal imprints on the psyche in a way that changes one’s responses to the world forever. I imagined Charles’s brain feverishly rewiring as he lay in bed, morbid and petrified. And the end result: a new association immediately and irrevocably attached to love. Fear. There’s no trauma that affects one quite like betrayal. The aftermath is sort of a relationship PTSD, a fear that now defies all logic, infuses every thought, and generalizes to all women. To survive, Charles rationalized an excuse to avoid the truth: “I’m not good at approaching women, I get too jittery. I still don’t really trust them. I decided they were all duplicitous.” “When did you begin to sexualize being cheated on?”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“It was like talking to a carrot.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“People often think anger is a negative emotion, one to avoid for obvious reasons, but anger is one of my favorite emotions because when you tap into it productively, it indicates a sense of self. It signifies that rights and boundaries have been trespassed on, and that they deserve respect.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“There’s no trauma that affects one quite like betrayal. The aftermath is sort of a relationship PTSD, a fear that now defies all logic, infuses every thought, and generalizes to all women.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“We all love the feeling of love, that warm euphoric state, but love is not simply one feeling. Nor is it easy. Along with the joy comes difficult emotions like anger, boredom, hurt. Then there is the formidable and inevitable avalanche of fear: of rejection, of disappointment, of losing yourself, of abandonment, of being found out as really unlovable. These fears can be irrational, but they can also come true.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“Does he add to your life force or take it away?”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

“core emotional needs of love, trust, and acceptance that drive us all in often very illogical and dysfunctional ways.”
― Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy