Russ Harris

The reality is, life involves pain. There’s no getting away from it. As human beings we are all faced with the fact that sooner or later we will grow infirm, get sick and die. Sooner or later we all will lose valued relationships through rejection, separation or death. Sooner or later we all will come face-to-face with a crisis, disappointment and failure. This means that in one form or another, we are all going to experience painful thoughts and feelings.

One of the greatest compliments you can pay another human being is to give them your full attention.

The fact is sometimes your partner will respond the way you want, and sometimes she won’t. Sometimes you’ll both see eye-to-eye on an issue, and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you’ll reconcile your differences with a win-win outcome, and sometimes you won’t. When things go the way you want, you’ll feel good. And when they don’t, you’ll feel pretty lousy. Are you willing to make room for all of this? If not, you’re going to struggle with reality. And that’s a fight that reality always wins!

The great playwright George Bernard Shaw put it like this: “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution that is wrong.”

Keep in mind that you can’t control the feelings of trust; you can only control the actions. So if you want to trust your partner again, then begin with small actions: trust him in tiny little ways and see if he proves worthy.

Any activity can be a toward move or an away move, depending on the situation.

they see sleeping in as wasting the day. (I’m not entirely sure which planet these people come from. They claim to be from Earth, but I find that hard to believe.)