Everybody makes mistakes, but you can’t keep asking people to forgive you again and again.True repentance makes you happy and makes the other person happy. Without it, trust will disappear and both of you will be less happy.The other person will know by the way you act that you’re truly beginning anew. Even if the other person doesn’t see it right away, don’t quarrel or be afraid. Just practice well and steadily, and slowly the truth will be revealed and the relationship will improve.

Whenever you find yourself judging your partner, go back to your in-breath and out-breath, and ask, How can I see this differently? Can I look more deeply to better understand her suffering and her difficulties?

Many parents love their children. Yet they make them suffer a lot in the name of love. They’re often not capable of understanding their children’s suffering, difficulties, hopes, and aspirations. We have to ask ourselves, “Am I really loving the other person by understanding them or am I just projecting my own needs?

The most precious inheritance parents can leave their children is their own happiness. Parents’ happiness is the most valuable gift they can give their children. Your children can use those lessons the whole of their lives. You may not be able to leave them money, houses, and land, but you can help them be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.

If a couple doesn’t practice mindfulness and does not try to understand their own and each other’s suffering, they won’t go far. They may continue to live together for a long time even when they’re not happy. They may stay together for the sake of the children, or because they don’t want to complicate their lives. There are many couples like that—they’re together but they’re not happy. There are other couples who can’t support being in such a situation and so they separate or divorce.

Whenever a painful feeling or emotion arises, we should be able to be present with it, not fight it, but recognize it

We need to not only recognize the suffering, pain, and difficulties within us, we need to devote time to dealing with them and transforming them

Sexuality should be accompanied by understanding and love. Without understanding and love, sex is empty.

You should have a chance to observe him when he sleeps. Look deeply, and see the tenderness that is revealed, the suffering, the hope, the despair that can be expressed during sleep. Sit there for fifteen minutes or half an hour, and just look. Understanding and compassion will arise in you, and you will know how to be there for your partner.