Sublime

I mean helping partners, within the relationship, to reach their own goals and fulfill their own potential. This is the growth mindset in action.

Therapists know the human heart, not primarily through books, but by being courageous about exploring their own nature. They may not share our fantasies exactly, but they accept that their own are as colourful and as complex. They don’t have our precise anxieties, but they know well enough the powerful and peculiar fears that hold us all hostage.

As a therapist, I have three sources of information: each client’s report, what happens in front of me in the room, and how I feel sitting with the client.

Intriguingly, Ickes finds that the longer many couples are married, the less accurate they are at reading each other. They lock in some early version of who their spouse is, and over the years, as the other person changes, that version stays fixed—and they know less and less about what’s actually going on in the other’s heart and mind.

Just as you learn how to witness yourself consciously, the work is to consciously observe your loved ones and your bonds to them.