How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

am paying close attention to you now. I accept you as you are in this moment. I allow you to be yourself. I appreciate you for what you have been and are. I have real affection for you, no matter what.

“I see you are feeling unappreciated,” may be an accurate and compassionate response to a partner who is angrily complaining.

It is a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found.

behind every complaint is a wish for one of the five A’s.

“Go through it, give in to it, experience it. . . . Then the most powerful energies become absolutely workable rather than taking you over, because there is nothing to take over if you are not putting up any resistance.”

Intimacy is mutual mirroring.

The ratio of appreciation to complaint in couples that stay together is five to one,

Interestingly, these phases of parenting resemble the three phases in an adult relationship: closeness in romance, distance in conflict, reunion in commitment.

I see my partner in these same old ways: ——— . I believe s/he will never change these behaviors: ———