Sam Reviews: "Courage my Love" by Merle Shain

"Psychoanalysts believe that if a baby has a good relationship with the breast he grows up to feel gratitude and learns to love.  But if the breast eludes him as often as it gives succor and relief, he feels anger and fear and learns envy and guilt and hate."

"If he ends up having to beg for what he needs, he learns more than just not to love, he learns to fear needing love, and to resent anyone who has that power over him."

"You can look the country over, searching for someone who sees the person you want to believe you are, but in the end, if you don't give yourself approval they won't be able to do much anything for you, no matter how much you try."

"The world was always yours, you would not take it.  Reach out your hand to yourself and it is yours."  -Archibald MacLeish

"You want to be in love all the time.  It's not possible to have romance every day in a longstanding relationship.  I can give you contentment and loyalty and enough security so you can grow.  But I can't give you excitement, I can't promise to admire you each and every day.  And while we would have, I hope, little renaissances along the way, there would not be that beating heart excitement which you seem to crave."

"Human love is based in every day, not fantasies or illusions.  It acknowledges the other person as a separate person and even loves them for their imperfections, for their vulnerabilities and their incompleteness, abd allows them to change and to grow.  It seeks to honor, not to use, to empower, not to overpower, and when it fails, it just gets cranky, it does not blow a fuse."

"In that world we all seek, that world of gifts given and gifts received, that world where there is goodness of fit, where there is always someone to catch our fall, the name of trust goes hand in hand with love."

"Respect is love in plain clothes, someone once said, and so is acceptance and understanding and really being known."

"There are people who idealize others as a way of solacing themselves, and others who keep you on a treadmill, auditioning for their approval, but always seem to keep the approval strangely in reserve.  And there are people who seem to always be in crisis, but it's hard to find a person who gives as good as they get or one who loves you for yourself."

"Intimacy requires accommodation and gentleness at the core."

"There is no intimacy unless there is mutual acceptance and mutual trust, no matter whatever else there is."

"One can make deals, or one can make love.  A deal asks back and love gives away and a contract has to be paid.  But love never comes due, because once given away, it always comes back to you."

"There was a time when we needed each other for support, both financial and domestic, but each sex can those things pretty well for themselves today.  Emotional support is the only thing we really need each other for now.  And if we aren't able to do that for each other, there won't be any reason to be together at all."

"Many of us have been sidelined bht violations so commonplace we can hardly find a friend to listen to us when we need to vent."

"The contract between men and women is entirely different now.  Nobody promises to love, honor, and obey any more.  At best, they promise to give it their best shot.  In a society in which fear of commitment has reached epidemic proportions, marriage is considered the last of the romantic gestures.  A triumph of hope over experience, and most people prefer to live together making bargains rather than promises."

"I don't want to be patient anymore.  And I don't want to be impatient either.  I want to be treated fairly.  And I don't want any more points for denying my needs."