If I seek to fulfill my own needs at the expense of my partner, we are sure to experience unhappiness, resentment, and conflict. The secret of forming a successful relationship is for both partners to win.
Interpretation
Successful relationships require mutual satisfaction rather than selfishness.
The quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the needs of both partners in a relationship. When individuals focus solely on their own desires at the expense of their partner, it leads to negative feelings like unhappiness and resentment. A healthy and successful partnership is one where both individuals work together to ensure that each person's needs are met, fostering a supportive and harmonious connection.
In practice
During a relationship workshop, this quote can be used to discuss the importance of compromise.
I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.
Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.
Nah, I've always had a great relationship with my two brothers, I have always had their support in my football and in everything. They've been very close to me and we have a great relationship.
The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.
She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.
When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want? Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn't they matter most now?
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