The Reconnected Heart Quotes

“Passive interest is simply not enough to help us grow. Only in the context of ‘active and constructive’ relationships can we establish real intimacy and a sense of being valued by others. In these relationships, we get to tell our story, and to convey our experience. It is the safe and motivated curiosity of the other person that establishes a rapport of real substance. That sort of relationship is the birth of real love and the death of our loneliness. It is the gestation of a life well lived, and food for our hearts.”
― Jonathan Andrews, The Reconnected Heart: How relationships can help us heal

“Keen interest from a caring person is important, but their understanding depends on our willingness to disclose information about ourselves. Humans need understanding but we can’t hope to be understood without being prepared to reveal the truth about ourselves. Lack of sharing is the death knell of intimacy.”
― Jonathan Andrews, The Reconnected Heart: How relationships can help us heal

“Simply looking each other in the eye can make a big difference. Failure to make eye contact, or perhaps, worse still, failing to look with interest into someone’s eyes, diminishes our sense of connectedness. When there is no eye contact or when there is no interest shown in the eyes of the person who gazes at us, we feel like we have been ‘looked through’. The Germans have a phrase for this—wie Luft behandeln—which translates as ‘looked at as though air’. When we are looked at in this sort of way, it can be quite hurtful.”
― Jonathan Andrews, The Reconnected Heart: How relationships can help us heal

“The overall picture in our society is one of growing disengagement from one another. If you add to the picture that, on average, smartphone users pick up their phones 39 times per day, and use their smartphones for, on average, just under three hours a day53, we are looking like very isolated people indeed. Unlike our grandparents, we are less involved in the community, more engrossed in technology, and as a result we are more and more prone to loneliness.”
― Jonathan Andrews, The Reconnected Heart: How relationships can help us heal