79 Quotes by Merle Shain

There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad.

The roots of love sink down and deep and strike out far, and they are arteries that feed our lives, so we must see that they get the water and sun they need so they can nourish us. And when you put something good into the world, something good comes back to you.

Sex deepens love and love deepens sex, so physical intimacy transforms everything and playing with it is playing with fire.

If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained.

No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out.

There are many pages in the book, many kinds of lives we each can live, many ways to be rich, and even more to be poor.

The conflict between what one is and who one is expected to be touches all of us. And sometimes, rather than reach for what one could be, we choose the comfort of the failed role, preferring to be the victim of circumstance, the person who didn't have a chance.

Life is like fording a river, stepping from one slippery stone to another, and you must rejoice every time you don't lose your balance, and learn to laugh at all the times you do.

I'm not sure there can be loving without commitment, although commitment takes all kinds of forms, and there can be commitment for the moment as well as commitment for all time. The kind that is essential for loving marriages - and love affairs, as well - is a commitment to preserving the essential quality of your partner's soul, adding to them as a person rather than taking away.