Unfuck Your Intimacy Quotes

“Love is not a nebulous idea. It's not a vague notion of warm and fuzzy. Its the real daily interactions of sharing our lives with someone, caring for them, and having them care for us in return. Love is what we do, day in day out, not what we profess in our status updates.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Along with criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling, the biggest relationship destroyer is the horseman of contempt. Contemptuous language—communication that demonstrates you don’t respect your partner -- not only becomes a pattern of negative dialogue between the two of you, it reinforces you in thinking about and seeing the negative in your partner.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Even the world’s best communicators still have conflict. If the goal was never to have conflict, that would be easy. You would just have to be a total doormat and give people whatever they want all the time. If you don’t want to be a doormat, the goal isn’t conflict avoidance, but conflict management.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Our feelings are completely our own, and we shouldn’t blame others for them. We can, however, ask them for different behaviors that better respect our boundaries. This skill works in regular communication and stays in place even if your convo has leveled up to conflict level. Staying with ownership of your own feelings completely shifts away from the blame game.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“It’s human nature to be toughest on the people we are closest to. This is why we tend to pick fights with our mate more than with anyone else.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Love is not a nebulous idea. It’s not a vague notion of warm and fuzzies. It’s the real, daily interactions of sharing our lives with someone, caring for them, and having them care for us in return. Love is what we do, day in day out. Not what we profess in our status updates.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Don’t allow yourself bad behavior, even if your partner does. If you kick a puppy, it may come back and lick your hand over and over again. But that is not an excuse to keep kicking. If you know your actions are hurting your partner at some level, you have to stop. Even if they say it’s okay. Even if they are not brave or strong enough to ask you to stop. Have some self-accountability. Stop the behavior or get out of the relationship.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Own it as yours but say it. If you are angry say you are angry, take responsibility and say why, ask for something different and hope you will get it. But don’t say you are okay when you are not. And FFS, don’t play a semantics game in your mind. Don’t be sneaky. Don’t be sketch. Don’t rationalize. If your partner would be legitimately hurt or upset by anything they saw in your phone or on your computer, don’t fucking do it.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“When long-term relationships start to fall apart over longer periods of time, it’s often because partners don’t remain connected in their growth. People change. All the time. Life changes us, maturity changes us, and our circumstances put us in places we never thought we’d be.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“You are responsible for yourself and whatever baggage you still carry (no matter who packed those bags to begin with). Hold yourself accountable.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“You Are Allowed to Be Crazy, You Aren’t Allowed to Act Crazy”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Anyone you are with should enhance your life, enhance your hopes and dreams, and enhance your compassion and engagement with yourself and the world around you.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Chocolate cake doesn’t require crazy sprinkles to be yummy.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“It’s okay to think someone is amazing but have zero interest in seeing them naked. They can be a great person, but not a great person for you. The important thing is that you tell them that.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“In the end, love is a behavior.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Dismissing problematic behaviors as addiction is a denial of responsibility and a declaration of a lack of self-control. And that right there is some fucking bullshit. Anyone who is engaging in problematic behavior around sex is absolutely accountable for their behavior and absolutely able to recognize their urges and consider how acting on them will impact their partners and their lives in general in the long term.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Generally speaking, an addiction requires some physiological dependence for diagnosis. Problems with sexual activity tend to be labeled as a process addiction, which means there is no involvement of a substance that creates a literal physical dependency (like alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs), but the behavior itself has addictive qualities. When the brain lights up in the process of doing something like shoe shopping or gambling, it’s easy to see the reward circuit being activated in a way it doesn’t for someone who doesn’t share that process addiction.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Doing things to feel healthy and good about yourself is awesome, but if you don’t do the inside work the outside work doesn’t truly fix anything.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“consent is simply permission for something to happen. Consent defines our rules of engagement, the ones we express through boundaries.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“when it comes down to it, we either let the world dictate our boundaries for us or we communicate them with what we do and say.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“One of the truest forms of emotional intelligence, it means we are both mindful of and engaged with our thoughts and feelings. Life, in general, requires a great deal of self-compassion. And the more we connect to our own failings, the more we are able to empathize with the failings of those around us.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Self-compassion is a mindful awareness of your value and worth as a human being. A human being who is flawed, imperfect, and struggling. This is opposed to self-esteem, which is based on external events. Self-esteem crashes when we are unsuccessful, either by the standards of others or ourselves. Self-compassion, on the other hand, is inclusive instead of competitive. It is always available to us, even when we are not our best selves or successful by the standards we have established. And it’s pretty much impossible to connect with others intimately if we don’t have some level of comfort with our own flawed existence.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“When we are going about our daily lives, we often don’t see the broken bits that are so obvious to those around us. We are navigating our world, thinking everything is status quo until something or someone points it out to us. Or we crash.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“If the sex is good, it’s 10% of your relationship. If it’s bad, it’s like 90%.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“Insecure attachments with ill-suited people cause a big chemical rush that’s fun for a minute. But as most of us have learned the hard way, relationships like these mean you are hanging on for the ride as long as you can, but this ain’t someone you bring home to momma.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating

“All our emotional work should start with figuring out what created the problem to begin with. I know that in my own life, understanding how I got somewhere is an essential part of getting out of it.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating