Couples Quotes

Discriminating against same-sex couples just isn't right. ~ Michelle Obama

There was mystery at the heart of any of marriage, secrets even people close to it would never know. ~ Stewart O'Nan

One of the most difficult challenges in our loving relationships is handling differences and disagreements. Often when couples disagree their discussions can turn into arguments and then without much warning into battles. Suddenly they stop talking in a loving manner and automatically begin hurting each other: blaming, complaining, accusing, demanding, resenting, and doubting. ~ John Gray

I can't tell you how many couples I know where the husband and the wife are both in the military and have deployed together, and they've got kids, and so I think times have changed and gender roles have blurred when it comes to the military. ~ Tanya Biank

I've never liked watching real-life couples play couples onscreen or onstage. It takes me out of the story. ~ Antonio Banderas

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION - side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

She liked his unique smell, and it turned on all five of her senses, wanting to see him naked, touch him while naked, hear him as he moaned while he made love, taste his skin, and feel his naked body as she seduced him with the trailing of hungry fingers. ~ Keira D. Skye

Noah's eyes held my face. I swallowed hard. The juxtaposition of him sitting in a room full of people while staring at no one but me was overwhelming. Something shifted inside of me at the intimacy of us, eyes locked amid the scraping of twenty graphite pencils on paper.
I shaded his face out of nothingness. I smudged the slope of his neck and darkened his delinquent mouth, while the lights accented the right angle of his jaw against the cloudy sky outside. I did not hear the bell. I did not hear the other students rise and leave the room. I did not even notice that Noah no longer sat at the stool. ~ Michelle Hodkin

Everybody teaches a system. I just try to shoot where I'm aiming. I play by sight and feel not by technical thoughts. ~ Fred Couples

The honeymoon is the unforgettable period in a couple's life. Later in life, tried and tired in the dust and mist of relations, together or not, they would always miss that time they spent together. Every bit of it. ~ Girdhar Joshi

Children are God's or nature's practical joke on couples - that which is produced by passion then proceeds to nearly kill it. ~ Dennis Prager

After much deliberation, and after reviewing the legal, public policy and civil-rights questions presented, I support marriage equality for same-sex couples and believe that DOMA should be repealed. ~ Bob Casey, Jr.

This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naive. That's okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way. A good way to start would be to let fall your notions about "perfect couples." It's really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times. ~ Cheryl Strayed

This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to "cycle through" different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson's. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing "chemistry" turn out not to be jokes at all. ~ Sherry Turkle

Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret. ~ Honore De Balzac

A sensitive woman is the greatest gift to a passionate man. ~ Lukhman Pambra

How many married couples who stay married until one of them dies can honestly say that they weren't terribly bored at times? ~ Holly Chamberlin

The night swelled with magic; not the beneficent kind of love-magic that sweeps couples away, but the kind of magic that rips and tears, the enchantment that creeps out of the woods and pounces. ~ Charlaine Harris

The couples were dancing with hands on each other's hips, yelling in each other's faces, streaming with sweat. An orchestra in Bavarian costume whooped and drank and perspired beer. The place stank like beer ~ Christopher Isherwood

Too many people think that when a couple doesn't fight that they are strong, but I have never bought that. The question should never be "do you fight," but "can you fight," because fights happen, that's just the way it is. What's important is how you handle it. The strongest couples aren't the ones who avoid fighting, but the ones who do fight and are able to grow from it, and come out on the other side with something better than they had before. ~ Julianna Scott

You had a lovely respect, which was respectfully lovely; however, you didn't have a love like married couples are supposed to have, Celeste. ~ Lynetta Halat

Liz asked me the other day what I thought about twice baked potatoes. How the fuck should I know? Was I supposed to be thinking about twice baked potatoes all this time? Is this where I went wrong? Are grown men supposed to have an opinion about twice baked potatoes? ~ Tara Sivec

Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm recognizable in certain circles, like girls know me, couples know me. But not all straight men know me. ~ Patti Stanger

We're lucky." He slipped his hand around her waist and splayed it in the small of her back. "Most couples have only one first kiss. We'll have two. ~ Christina Dodd

My heart will never stop beating so that our love is never separated. ~ Anthony T. Hincks.

There is no truth in the idea that the person who hits the most balls will become the best golfer. Golf is a bizarre sport. You can work for years on your game, without making any improvement in your score. ~ Fred Couples

Today the House has a chance to give 25 million married couples the best Valentine's Day gift possible, elimination from the most unfair of taxes, the marriage tax penalty. ~ Jerry Weller

I stabbed you. With a massive sword. You caught on fire."
His lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. "Okay, so maybe our problems aren't like other couples. ~ Cassandra Clare

In his devouring mind's eye he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. ~ Geoffrey Crayon

Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties? ~ Nigel Slater

A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences. ~ Dave Meurer

You're an expert at sorry and keeping the lines blurry ~ Taylor Swift

Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways. ~ Diane Ackerman

We dance. Sweet, downcast, through-the-lashes-glances bely every beating she got at thirteen, every lash of the tongue from her dad at fourteen, every heroin high that let her out for awhile, every hour and day she had to be tough.

She is so natural and soft. Her shoulders are down, hips loose and swinging as we close together. I swear I'm growing chest hair just looking at her. I've been a boy in public before, but I've never seen her like this. That's it exactly; I haven't seen her at all, except in glimpses, in half-confessional role-play sex. And here she is - pressed tight against my chest, hips grinding against my crotch to the bass bump of the music. Her thigh along mine is electric heaven. Two drag queens cannot decide whether we are breeders or in drag. I stroke my mascara-made mustache at them - but none of it matters with hands in suede and the way she smiles. ~ Various

Remind yourself where you come from.

I spent the majority of my life running away from Utah, from the life I led there, from the memories I associated with those early years. It felt very someone-else-ago to me. London changed me profoundly.
When we were dancing on DWTS together, Jennifer Grey called me one night. She was having trouble with her back and wanted to see a physiotherapist. "Can you come with me?" she asked. She drove us through a residential section of Beverly Hills. We pulled into a house with a shed out back. Oddly, it didn't look like a doctor's office. There was a couch and incense burning. An Australian guy with a white beard came in : "Hey, mates." I looked at Jen and she winked at me. This was no physical therapy. She'd signed us up for some bizarre couples therapy!
The guy spoke to us for a while, then he asked Jennifer if she wouldn't mind leaving us to chat. I thought the whole thing was pretty out there, but I didn't think I could make a run for it.
"So, Derek," he said. "Tell me about your childhood." I laid it all out for him--I talked for almost two hours--and he nodded. "You can go pick him up now."
I raised an eyebrow. "Pick who up?"
The therapist smiled. "That younger boy, that self you left in Utah. You left him there while you've been on a mission moving forward so vigorously. Now you can go get him back."
I sat there, utterly stunned and speechless. It was beyond powerful and enlightening. Had I really ~ Derek Hough

This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt. ~ Earl Wilson

I know there are other couples around us, but they feel like distant blurs. Only Alexei is solid and sure. Between my tight dress and aching feet and swirling head, he may be the only thing keeping me steady. ~ Ally Carter

Oh, God, the lovebirds," Magnus said, pulling the pillow off his face. "I hate happy couples. ~ Cassandra Clare

They fell asleep smiling. It is to erase the fixed smiles of sleeping couples that Satan trained roosters to crow at five in the morning. ~ Tom Robbins

I don't know what we're doing here – you and me … I don't know what we are or what we can be, but this doesn't have to be about that. This can just be about … a chance. Taking a chance. ~ Dianna Hardy

My intention all along had been to get my wakeboarding legs back this first day. Maybe I'd do tricks when we went out the next day. I didn't want to get too cocky and bust ass in front of Sean. But as I got more comfortable and forgot to care, I tried a few standbys-a front flip, a scarecrow. There was no busting of ass. So I tried a backroll. And landed it solidly.
Now I got cocky. I did a heelside backroll with a nosegrab. This meant that in the middle of the flip, I let go of the rope handle with one hand, reached down, and grabbed the front of the board. It served no purpose in the trick except to look impressive, like, This only appears to be a difficult trick. I have all the time in the world. I will grab the board. Yawn. And I landed it. This was getting too good to be true.
My brother swung the boat around just before we reached the graffiti-covered highway bridge that spanned the lake. Cameron had spray-painted his name and his girlfriend's name on the bridge, alongside all the other couples' names and over the faded ones. My genius brother had tried to paint his own name but ran out of room on that section of bridge.

McGULLICUDD
Y
Sean wisely never painted his girlfriends' names. He would have had to change them too often. For my part, I was very thankful that when most of this spray-painting action was going on last summer, I was still too short to reach over from the pile and haul myself up on the main part of the bridge. I probably ~ Jennifer Echols

It is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a much likelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If the marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society as much as possible in public, there would be more loving couples than there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring husband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the clambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There'd be little cooling then. ~ Thomas Hardy

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both. ~ Isabel Allende

The virtue of the civil partnerships scheme lay in the attempt to treat the needs of gay and lesbian couples as what they are, not to bundle them into some other category. ~ John Sentamu

In Manhattan, marriage is a trend. Couples kiss over their arugula and radicchio salads. They fondle each other's genitals while devouring their pasta puttanesca. By the time the tiramisu arrives, they've slid under the table. ~ Cynthia Heimel

Why do women always look so funny alone at night? she thought. I guess you're so used to seeing them with someone. ~ Shirley Jackson

Some men will take you to the movies. Some will take you to the mountaintop. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Trick." I say a little louder.
"Shhh, sleep baby." He mumbles. I laugh and smack his arm.
"Wake up. I can feel your morning wood." This gets his attention and he sits up, taking me with him. The arms wrapped around my middle graze my breasts as he shifts up and a tingle shoots straight between my legs.
"God, Caroline, I'm so ... " He stops, probably realizing that he doesn't have morning wood, "I don't have ... " He's actually pretty cute all sleepy. He laughs.
"I know but I couldn't figure out how else to get your attention." I shrug. ~ K. Larsen

There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge. ~ Bella DePaulo

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate 'relationship' involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the 'married' couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.

The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.

There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, 'mine' is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as 'ours.'

This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a house ~ Wendell Berry

The family is on its way out; couples go next; then no more keeping cats or parrots. ~ Mason Cooley

I did large drawings of couples having sex! Men and woman enjoying intercourse and oral sex in a Madison Avenue Gallery? That was the first time I broke a barrier that made me think, some idiot is going to blow my brains out for sure. ~ Betty Dodson

And there were carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of couples who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life ~ Kevin Hearne

A thousand fireworks explode inside me, and I feel them in him too, in his lips on mine, and his hands in my hair, and he way we pull each other closer. Everything else falls away, and in this moment, when we touch, we are light. ~ Jessi Kirby

I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with. ~ Fannie Flagg

Annabeth," he said hesitantly, "in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace."
Her expression turned guarded. "Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life - "
"I know," Percy said. "But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There's nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me ... and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over ... "
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. "Oh," she said ...
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just ... I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned - "
"No!" she said. "Gods, Percy, that's so sweet. ~ Rick Riordan

Just promise me you won't be one of those couples that stays together for the children, That only screws people up, including the children. ~ Jennifer Niven

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. ~ Emma Goldman

Where they are setting up the market, it used to be a place for torture," Julien remarked, indicating the place in front of them.
"Wow," Ava said. "I know I said I wanted to ditch the romanticized idea of Paris with couples and hearts and flowers but I wasn't thinking of touring all the places they once did waterboarding. ~ Mandy Baggot

There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get ... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to surprise his wife with flowers, it baffled him. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them. He'd never seen Kim and J.P. kiss, let alone argue. ~ Stewart O'Nan

In so many millennia, the humans never did figurs love out. How much is physical, how much in the mind? How much accident and how much fate? Why did perfect matches crumble and impossible couples thrive? I dont know the answer better than they did. Love simply is where it is. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Maybe he, like Mum, believed God had delivered three extra children, one-two-three, as a sign of His plan for this couple's long, long friendship. But God had also delivered to him the Oxford Paper Company, and the foamy river it sat upon. And the long working hours it required. And the poison it put in the air. Three more girls from God might portend a long married life, but a multi-acre paper mill, with much heat but no heart, could make for still competition if it decided to bestow the opposite.
Maybe it was the work. ~ Monica Wood

Couples stray," said Edgar. "Part of the breaking-in process."
"Not breaking in, breaking." Nicola differed sharply. "You can glue people together again. But then your relationship's like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It's never the same. I can see you haven't a notion what I'm on about, so you'll have to take my word for it."
"Christ, you're a babe in the woods." Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. "You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe - bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love's gonna last it if can't take abuse. ~ Lionel Shriver

On evenings like this, when the streets below were filled with couples strolling, and laughing people spilled out of pubs, already planning meals, nights out, trips to clubs, something ached inside me; something ~ Jojo Moyes

But right now, karaoke is one of the places where we go to form our own culture club, which is one of the millions of things a relationship is - building a shared language out of the things that fire up your blood. Couples need as many of those languages as they can get. ~ Rob Sheffield

Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Romantic couples. Each room has its own flavor, its own feel. ~ Nora Roberts

We went to a movie, Marlboro Man and me, longing for the quiet time in the dark. We couldn't find it anywhere else--my parents' house was bustling with people and plans and presents, and Marlboro Man had some visiting cousins staying with him on the ranch. A dim movie theater was our only haven, and we took full advantage of being only one of two couples in the entire place. We reverted back to adolescence, unashamed, cuddling closer and closer as the movie picked up steam. I took it even further, draping my leg over his and resting my hand on his tan bicep. Marlboro Man's arm reached across my waist as the temperature rose between us. Two days before our wedding, we were making out in a dark, hazy movie theater. It was one of the most romantic moments of my life. ~ Ree Drummond

Couples seducing a third will find it's much easier to get a three-way started if the woman takes the lead. ~ Victoria Vantoch

I had come to realize the importance of the Nation, and of shared, communal, social responsibility, to be held as equally important as individual concerns. The elderly, the widowed, newly married couples, the poor, the unemployed, disbanded soldiers and children, who would be required to attend school, must be provided for from state funds. And all this support is not the nature of charity, but of a right. ~ Thomas Paine

The Voice of Heaven is a still small voice. The voice of peace in the home is a quiet voice. There is need for much discipline in marriage, not of one's companion, but of oneself ... When couples cultivate the art of the soft answer, it blesses their home, their life together, and their companionship. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

The happiest, healthiest, and longest lasting relationships happen when each partner is secure and whole within themselves. ~ Pamela Cummins

There have been plenty of very bare hotels with couples humping next door. I don't stay in very grand hotels. ~ Honor Blackman

They've been married for a little over a year, and they've withstood a lot together, with no signs of parting. They channel power from the universe that only nerd stars can access. I'm sure of it. The galaxy is on their side. ~ Krista Ritchie

Almost all of my early art dealt with the fallout from middle-class taboos, the messy, the ambivalent emotions couples felt, the inherent racism, the sexual tensions and the unhappiness roiling below the surface of our prim suburban lives. Meanwhile I was a suburban bad boy - cynical, sarcastic, contemptuous of all authority. ~ Eric Fischl

Should we now explain to UK couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren? ~ John Guillebaud

To deny an entire group of people the ability to be legal couples is anti-American and anti-freedom. As a devoted husband and father of two, I can't imagine the state of Minnesota not recognizing my love for my wife Isabelle. We would welcome and respect the equal rights for gays to experience the same joy and privileges of marriage that we do. ~ Chris Kluwe

I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you. But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I'd no sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear vicious drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we're having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich. ~ Lionel Shriver

But God will know the slow tread of an old couple's love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just to spice things up. ~ Chris Rock

Misgivings, n.
Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us.
"There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more. ~ David Levithan

My parents were never really married, by which I mean they never bothered making their relationship official with any church. I'm not embarrassed by the fact. They considered themselves married and didn't see much point in announcing it to any government or God. I respect that. In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Have you kissed many boys before?" he asked quietly.
His question brought my mind back into focus. I raised an eyebrow. "Boys? That's an assumption."
Noah laughed, the sound low and husky. "Girls, then?"
"No."
"Not many girls? Or not many boys?"
"Neither," I said. Let him make of that what he would.
"How many?"
"Why - "
"I am taking away that word. You are no longer allowed to use it. How many?"
My cheeks flushed, but my voice was steady as I answered. "One."
At this, Noah leaned in impossibly closer, the slender muscles in his forearm flexing as he bent his elbow to bring himself nearer to me, almost touching. I was heady with the proximity of him and grew legitimately concerned that my heart might explode. Maybe Noah wasn't asking. Maybe I didn't mind. I closed my eyes and felt Noah's five o' clock graze my jaw, and the faintest whisper of his lips at my ear.
"He was doing it wrong. ~ Michelle Hodkin

I've called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act to help end discrimination to help end discrimination against same-sex couples in this country. Now, I want to add we have a duty to uphold existing law, but I believe we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate old divides. And fulfilling this duty in upholding the law in no way lessens my commitment to reversing this law. I've made that clear. ~ Barack Obama

I wonder how many marriages would have survived if it weren't for the children they created together. How many couples would have continued to live together happily without the children being the glue that holds their family together. ~ Colleen Hoover

I think a movie is a great date idea for younger couples. It takes the pressure off, since something else is entertaining you. It's also good for couples in a very comfortable relationship. ~ Chris Carmack

Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside ~ Sarah Dessen

Arik and Cadie always knew they wouldn't be one of those couples that let problems between them fester. They would immediately address any issues that arose, bring them out into the open, discuss them until they reached a mutually satisfactory conclusion. They felt bad for some of the Founders who they believed had unhappy marriages - couples who were not strong enough to be truthful and open with each other, and even worse, with themselves ~ Christian Cantrell

A crowd of drunken lovers. Newspaper
hats, new couples falling from couches and love-
seats - the pleasure remembered,
never the regret. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon

Both men and women are conceived as merely capable of response to a situation that their society has already defined for them as sexual, and so the Arapesh feel that it is necessary to chaperon betrothed couples who are too young ... with their definition of sex as a response to an external situation rather than as spontaneous desire, both men and women are regarded as helpless in the face of seduction. Parents warn their sons even more than they warn their daughters against permitting themselves to get into situations in which someone can make love to them. ~ Margaret Mead

Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing - Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high - the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked. ~ A.S.A Harrison

O, Love's but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle!
See the couples advance -
O, Love's but a dance!
A whisper, a glance,
"Shall we twirl down the middle?"
O, Love's but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle! ~ Henry Austin Dobson

Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child ... ~ Margaret Sanger

One of the greatest comforts of this life is friendship; and one of the comforts of friendship is that of having someone we can trust with a secret. But friendship does not pair us off into couples, as marriage does; each of us generally has more than one friend to his name, and so a chain is formed, of which no man can see the end. When we allow ourselves the comfort of depositing a secret in the bosom of a friend, we inspire him with the wish to enjoy the same comfort for himself. It is true that we always ask him not to tell anyone else; and this is a condition which, if taken literally, would break the series of comforting confidences at once. But the general practice is to regard the obligation as one which prevents a man from passing the secret on, except to an equally trusted friend and on the same condition of silence. From trusted friend to trusted friend, the secret travels and travels along an unending chain, until it reaches the ears of the very man or men from whom the first speaker meant to keep it for ever. It would generally require a long time to get there, if each of us only had two friends - one to confide the secret to us, and another to whom we can pass it on. But there are some privileged men who have hundreds of friends, and once a secret reaches one of them, its subsequent journeys are so rapid and multitudinous that no one can keep track of them. ~ Alessandro Manzoni

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don't have a partner. They were right. I didn't get it. I didn't get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled "Make Your Partner a Real Partner" about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent - 84 percent of whom are women. I ~ Sheryl Sandberg

The only thing I knew about pickups was this: growing up, I always inwardly mocked the couples I saw who drove around in them. The girl would be sitting in the middle seat right next to the boy, and the boy's right arm would be around her shoulders, and his left arm would be on the wheel. I'm not sure why, but there was something about my golf course upbringing that had always caused me to recoil at this sight. Why is she sitting in the middle seat? I'd wonder. Why is it important that they press against each other as they drive down the road? Can't they wait until they get home? I looked at it as a sign of weakness--something pitiable. They need to get a life may have even crossed my mind once or twice, as if their specific brand of public affection was somehow directly harming me. But that's what happens to people who, by virtue of the geography of their childhood, are deprived of the opportunity to ride in pickup trucks. They become really, really judgmental about otherwise benign things.
Still, every now and then, as Marlboro Man showed me the beauty of the country in his white Ford F250, I couldn't help but wonder…had he been one of those boys in high school? I knew he'd had a serious girlfriend back in his teenage years. Julie. A beautiful girl and the love of his adolescent life, in the same way Kev had been mine. And I wondered: had Julie scooched over to the middle seat when Marlboro Man picked her up every Friday night? Had he hooked his right arm around her ne ~ Ree Drummond

On Valentine's Day, couples in Calgary can celebrate their love for each other with couples' nude yoga - great way to get in shape and see a side of your partner you've never seen before and never want to see again. ~ Peter Sagal

Having a baby or not having one was not his decision. It was mine. There isn't a single couple where when it comes to having a baby the man's decision counted in any real way. Couples who have babies usually have them because the woman involved is determined to do so. The only time a man's POV counts is if he is a domineering, insecure jackass with no respect for you or your body. Most men think it would be 'nice' and then go along with whatever you want. ~ Radhika Vaz

It is better to be alone then to be in a relationship, while you are trying to figure out what love means to you. ~ Shannon L. Alder