Best 100 quotes of Harriet Lerner on MyQuotes

Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions.

Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.

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.

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. . . .If, however, we do not use our anger to define ourselves clearly in every important relationship we are in--and manage our feelings as they arise--no one else will assume this responsibility for us.

Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, "Is my anger legitimate?" is similar to asking, "Do I have the right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what's the point of getting thirsty when I can't get anything to drink now, anyway?" Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel--and certainly our anger is no exception.

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.

Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.

As long as we can feel hope, there is hope.

Before modern feminism, stories of female ambition were silenced or erased; even now, they are told with apology ("Yes, it's a great honor to be a Nobel Prize laureate, but really, what I love best is staying home and being a mother to Kevin and Annie").

Being able to make a sincere apology - one that says, "Yes, I get it; I screwed up. Your feelings make sense, and I'm taking this seriously" - is at the heart of being successful in leadership, parenting, and friendship, as well as our own integrity and self-worth. And the failure to apologize? Even a good relationship will suffer quietly - because we really feel it when someone won't take responsibility for what they said, or didn't say.

Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.

deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.

Every time I open Facebook, I see a post with something like, "We must forgive or be prisoners of our own bitterness and hate." People think that forgiveness is all-or-nothing, but this myth hurts people. You can forgive 10, 97, or 14 percent. Forgiveness is complicated.

Fear has never helped anybody make good choices. It leads to clinging when we should be walking.

Fear is a message - sometimes helpful, sometimes not - but often conveying critical information about our beliefs, our needs, and our relationship to the world around us.

Feeling essentially superior to other people is as sure a sign of poor self-esteem as feeling essentially inferior.

Feeling inadequate is an occupational hazard of motherhood.

I'd say that while it's normal to long for an apology, if you really need it, you're not ready to speak to whoever harmed you. Non-apologizers tend to walk on a tightrope of defensiveness above a huge canyon of low self-esteem - they just can't listen to anything that's going to set them off balance. So focus on what you say for your own sake, because you need to hear your own voice telling the truth.

If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.

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.

If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.

If you're married to an entrenched non-apologizer, it won't help to doggedly demand one. Some folks lack the self-esteem required to take responsibility for their less than honorable behaviors, feel remorse, and offer a heartfelt apology. And many people are so hard on themselves for the mistakes they make, they don't have the emotional room to admit vulnerability and apologize to a partner.

If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.

I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.

In long-term relationships ... we are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness ... we confront the challenge of sustaining both--without losing either.

Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.

Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships.

It is an act of courage to acknowledge our own uncertainty and sit with it for a while.

It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.

It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.

It's remarkable how many couples can precisely describe their particular pattern of painful fighting, and claim to be helpless to change it.

It's true that over-apologizing interrupts the flow of conversation and irritates the person who has to stop and offer reassurance, like, "No, it's fine, don't worry about it." But far greater than the challenge of toning down unnecessary "sorrys" is offering an apology when one is due.

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

Keep in mind that the tendency to be judgmental - toward yourself or another person - is a good barometer of how anxious or stressed out you are. Judging others is simply the flip side of judging yourself.

Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along.

Love alone is never a good enough reason to marry.

Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self.

Many people value criticism in the early stage of a relationship, but become allergic to it over time. Remember this: No one can survive in a marriage (at least not happily) if they feel more judged than admired. Your partner won't make use of your constructive criticism if there's not a surrounding climate of admiration and respect.

Marriage is the lightning rod that absorbs anxiety and stress from all other sources, past and present. When marriage has a firm foundation of solid friendship and mutual respect, it can tolerate a fair amount of raw emotion. A good fight can clear the air, and it's nice to know we can survive conflict and even learn from it. Many couples, however, get trapped in endless rounds of fighting and blaming that they don't know how to get out of. When fights go unchecked and unrepaired, they can eventually erode love and respect, which are the bedrock of any successful relationship.

Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation.

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.

No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.

Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness.

Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, "I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid" - they also ask, "Do you forgive me?," because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.

Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

People marry with a deep longing that their partner will tend to their wounds, not throw salt in them. Honor your partner's vulnerability.

Pretending can be a bold form of experimentation and inventiveness. In pretending joy or happiness, we may discover or enhance our capacity for it.

Relationships are most likely to fail when we don't address problems or hold our partner accountable for unfair or irresponsible behavior ... the ability to clarify our values, beliefs, and life goals--and then to keep our behavior congruent with them--is at the heart of a solid marriage.