The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found
Jeanne Safer
Top 10 Best Quotes
“People are more likely to fall intensely in love when they are anxious and their self-esteem is lowest.... Feeling inadequate, unhappy, and empty are virtual prerequisites for falling and staying desperately in love; at least temporarily, the ecstasy of desire seems to cure everything that ails you. There is a connection between aversive states of mind -- loneliness, shame, even grief and horror -- and a propensity to feel overwhelming passion; this is one reason why romances blossom in times of war or natural disasters, as well as during the private disasters of our everyday lives.”
“Exercising will builds esteem from within through action on one's own behalf; it disproves the premise that only another person can provide it. The result, long in coming and always worth the effort, is the experience of authentic agency in your own life, a sense of self that cannot be destroyed because it is not dependent on anyone else.”
“Even though it inspires some of the world's greatest literature, music, and art, obsessive love is one of the most potent and compelling of tortures and one of the most difficult to overcome -- especially because it feels beyond conscious control. Tormented lovers try the patience even of those who truly love them, because they sufferers do not desire help extricating themselves though they claim to be seeking it; this is an illness from which no one wants to be cured.”
“The world shrinks to include only two people, only one of whom -- the beloved -- has power. This inequitable distribution naturally breeds resentment and feelings of hopelessness that the dependent person dare not express for fear of alienating the necessary person even more.”
“I said it grieved me to part from anything that mattered to me, yet I welcomed the grief because it meant I had felt deeply and needed to express it. 'I even had trouble leaving the Parthenon,' I told him ... 'because it was so beautiful and I knew I'd never see it again.”
“What ultimately got me through was my single-minded determination, voiced aloud to myself and recorded in my diary, to discover the causes of my blindness and never to repeat them. Fearlessly pursuing insight was my badge of honor, my route back to self-respect.”
“Trauma is as subjective as desire, and the meanings we attribute to experiences, as well as the context in which they occur, determine their ultimate effect on our lives.”
“Defining your own truth and then living according to it ... changes your sense of self and sets you free; it makes you fearless -- or at least more courageous -- with every significant person in your life. When you're not so insecure, there are things -- offhand cruelties, insensitivities large and small -- you don't tolerate, things you don't have to deny.... Once you are the one who determines the meaning of your life, nobody can gainsay it. This act of self-assertive defiance immunizes you -- at least to a certain extent -- from ever allowing someone else to control your destiny ever again.”
“There are many ways to become mistress (or master) of one's fate after a betrayal, but they all have things in common: conscious effort and a fighting spirit, embodied in what I call 'the Affirmative No.' The Affirmative No incorporates self-enhancing outrage, independence, and courage. It is a stance through which a traumatized person actively proclaims her will by rejecting the role of victim.... Unable to change our predicaments, we actively changed their meaning and our relationship to them, and in the process, we discovered that we could exert power when we thought we had none.”
“The longing to belong and to be prized by one's peers permeates childhood and adolescence and can be compelling and anxiety provoking at any time in life, as the common dread of cocktail parties in adulthood attests. This need -- as old and as potent as erotic desire -- is a fundamental part of being human; according to object relations theory, we become ourselves by being recognized and loved by others.”
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Book Keywords:
victimhood, will, resilience, learning-from-the-past, love, goodbye, self-respect, betrayal, willpower, parthenon, belonging, victim, obsession, object-relations, depression, grief, subjectivity, motivational, unrequited-love, learning-from-mistakes, self-esteem, will-power, romance
