Harriet Lerner Quotes

Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis.

My debt to feminism is simply incalculable. Feminism allowed me to see past a ‘reality’ that I had once taken as a given. It helped me to pay attention to countless voices, my own included, that I had been taught ‘don’t count.’ Feminism allows me to maintain hope.

Wherever you find a wife and mother-in-law slugging it out, you’ll find a son who’s not speaking up to either his mother or his wife.

What initially attracts us and what later becomes ‘the problem’ are usually one and the same.

Don’t count on the power of your love or your nagging to create something that wasn’t there to begin with.

An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way.

If you exchanged wedding vows, tape them to your bathroom mirror and read them aloud to yourself every morning along with the ritual brushing of teeth. It’s not realistic to believe that you will live your promises as a daily practice — unless you’re a saint or a highly evolved Zen Buddhist. Not where marriage is concerned. But you can make a practice of returning to your vows when the going gets rough.

Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.

We all fear change, even as we seek it.

The best apology, I think, was from my husband, Steve, who slept with a close friend of mine decades back, when we were committed to being life partners but not yet married. And many of the factors that made Steve’s apology so healing are universal. One important thing is that he confessed to the affair, rather than my discovering it. He looked deeply into his own history in terms of why this happened, but he never used that history as an excuse.

We’re vulnerable to repeating history, especially if we don’t know what’s driving us. For example, it may be a family tradition to marry someone with addiction problems, or who is an injured bird in need of caretaking. Or, you may be drawn to guys who remind you of your distant, unavailable father — or your ill-tempered mother — with the unconscious belief that you can take an old story, and through the power of your love, give it a new, happy ending.

Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.