On love, limerence, and other-significant-others

Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship

“I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest essays. “I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time.”

I know that limerence can be misleading. It can be the beginning of a good relationship, or a complete disaster. If someone feels like the answer to the question of your life, you might want to address the fundamental sense of lack that they are triggering.

Sasha Chapin • 50 Things I Know

Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

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There is almost no path a human being... See more

There’s a real tension in love — at the beginning of love, particularly — between the desire to be honest about who one is and the desire to win the affection of another person. Of course, ideally, we can both be honest and loved for being honest. That’s the dream.

Brené Brown • Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian

I used to believe in the adage, “If they wanted to, they would.” But now I think it’s more like, “If they’re open-hearted, and open-minded, and curious, and not too cautious, then, maybe, they might. Or they still might not.”

What’s more precious when one is young — that loose sensation of complete possibility, or the soundness of maturing under an affectionate wing?

lillian fishman • Would You Rather Have Married Young?

To sit with the discomfort of holding multiple truths in relationship is part of how we open our relationships to the ecology. To shift our understanding of relationships from mainstream expectations that freeze us in certain roles, means inviting in new ways of discerning trust and safety that can hold more complexity.

to practice relationship ecology

Relationship Ecology is the practice of seeing communities, and relationships as part of an ecosystem. By seeing communities as an ecosystem, moments of conflict are not personality errors, but rather, signals that communicate a weak point in the community ecosystem asking for support.

When we insist that we could only ever effectively love someone who’s been perfectly “healed” — who will not struggle, accidentally hurt us, trigger us, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, or participate in any other uncomfortable display of humanity — we are reinforcing, and perhaps projecting, our own beliefs that we have to be perfect in... See more