Gary Chapman Quotes

I think all of us struggle with how to keep relationship alive. And yet it can't be static either. It's never going to be how it was when you first met because you're not in that place anymore; you're not necessarily the same people. So, that's the struggle - you're trying to make the relationship move forward with the rest of your life and make it special and meaningful. And I think it's incredibly challenging.

We measure success and depth by length of time, but it is possible to have a deep relationship that doesn't always stay the same.

I used to think--and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do--that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.

Relationships do change throughout the course of your life, and I always think in terms of relationships changing and evolving rather than starting and stopping.

Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life. If you're with an individual who isn't moving in the same direction and at the same rate that you are, it ain't going to work.

I have had the same friends since college, although as time has gone on, the daily nature of those relationships has changed, such that it is not daily at all.

When you're in a relationship, the dynamic seems to change over time. I only had two long-term girlfriends, but with both of them, as time went on, the sex tapered off in terms of frequency. We had sex less and less often. And talking with friends or whatever, hearing other people's stories, that seems to be the case with a lot of romantic relationships.

Love lasts because it changes and not because it stays the same and never faces any challenges.

Two people in a relationship either grow together or apart over time.

On second marriage: It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it's scary but I think it can happen when you get involved and you don't know yourself yet.

Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.

Love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.

Any marriage worth the name is no better than a series of beginnings - many of them abortive.

I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.

When you get older your dad becomes this other man rather than a scary man, and you have a friendship.

Like species, couples die out or evolve.

The conventional parabola--sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical.

I missed him, of course, but sometimes close friendships have a tidal beat that pulls you towards different shores though the ocean that connects you remains.

It is a way to avoid difficulties, but whenever you avoid difficulties and challenges you have avoided growth also. Married people never grow. Lovers grow, because they have to meet the challenge every moment - and with no security. They have to create an inner phenomenon. With security you need not bother to create anything; the society helps.

A new study found that women gain more weight after marriage, but men gain more weight after a divorce. Yeah, the divorce usually takes place after men point out that women gained more weight after marriage.

A third myth is that men think that women like guys who are dangerous. As a result, guys will often smoke cigarettes, drink too much, and ride a motorcycle without a helmet. The reality? Women don't like guys who are dangerous. Women want us to think that because women are trying to kill us.

In the old days, one married a wife; now one forms a company with a female partner, or moves in to live with a friend. And then one seduces the partner, or defiles the friend.

Children change a lot in terms of personality. Camaraderie that you feel with somebody might not be there a year later.

The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.

I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.