Fundamentals about human relationships

♦ EVERY overreaction, poor attitude and expression of anger will have an equal, opposite reaction no matter how much love there is between or among you.

♦ People are designed for freedom. Get in the way of someone’s freedom and you will pay for it. It may take years but it will cost you.

♦ The person who most wants whatever from another person (time, sex, a beach walk, a loan, long intimate chats over coffee) places the other in a position of power. This is why pleading and begging are so unattractive.

♦ The stronger, more mature person in a relationship will be the one who seeks forgiveness and reconciliation when a relationship is derailed. While the focus is on who is right or wrong and who needs to apologise first, the people are not ready for reconciliation.

Reconciliation seeks reconnection not victory.

♦ Mutual attraction is about matched levels of maturity or immaturity. People of dissimilar levels of maturity will hardly notice each other. Equally needy people will attract each other like powerful magnets and the attraction will feel like a match made in heaven – at least at first.

♦ Love and control cannot coexist in the same relationship.