Marshall Rosenberg

“It makes me sad that you don’t give me the opportunity to give of myself.”

This is how wars are created. When we’re not able to say clearly what we need and only know how to make analyses of others that sound like criticism, wars are never far away, whether they are verbal, psychological, or physical.

Love is not denying ourselves and doing for others; rather, it is honestly expressing whatever our feelings and needs are and empathically receiving the other person’s feelings and needs. To receive empathically does not mean that you must comply—just accurately receive what is expressed as a gift of life from the other person. Love is honestly expressing our own needs; that doesn’t mean making demands, but just, “Here I am. Here’s what I like.”

I have found that if I am bored, the person doing the talking is probably equally bored. It usually means we are not talking from life; instead of being in touch with our feelings and needs in this conversation, we’re getting into some socially learned habits of boring one another.

Are we really getting what we want from life? If not, let’s do something about it. Each moment is precious, too precious. So when our vitality is down, let’s do something about it and wake up.

is so full of unpleasant stuff as it is, so why deal with anything unpleasant

Yes, life is so full of unpleasant stuff as it is, so why deal with anything unpleasant?

to see that any time anyone does anything out of fear, guilt, or shame, everybody loses

Sure, it would be nice now to deepen things with him and go further, but she doesn’t need to depend on his availability for her own healing to take place.

What I’ve found over the years is the more we talk about the past, the less we heal from it.