read this (so they told me)

Over the last five years I've amassed a considerable amount of well meaning advice by well of (mainly) books and websites.

Rather than bore the minions with my own opinions (woohoo that rhymes!), this week, I'm offering you a selection of some of the best ones:

Websites/books


http://www.5lovelanguages.com/
http://www.virtuallylove.com/2011/09/01/love-seeks-solutions-fear-seeks-failure/
http://www.loveatfirstfight.com/category/relationship-advice/communication-skills/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-happy-families-know/how-to-keep-love-going-strong
http://www.marsvenus.com/
http://www.soulmateoracle.com/article/about-soulmates.html
http://solomum.blogtown.co.nz/


and some quotes to ponder

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”  I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.  Let our scars fall in love.”
― Galway Kinnell

“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
― Henry Winkler

“Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.”
― Christopher Pike, Remember Me

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find

someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”
― Scott Adams, God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together -- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
― Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life