Gary Chapman Quotes

I think love can come fairly easily and grow - but really liking the core essence of someone is a much harder thing to bottle. If you have both, you're in pretty good shape.

Contrary to popular mythology, the best and most durable relationships are based not on vulnerability or passion but on a conjugation of positive attributes, a meeting of mind, body and soul that is all the more powerful as it is not weighed down with neediness and unreasonable expectation.

I like women but I want a meaningful relationship.

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.

need is never a good basis for any relationship. it has to be much more than that.

I like relationships on TV between men and women, when they're not just flirtatious and sexual.

I'm not one to run around with different girls. I like someone that makes me feel good and that I can make feel good.

I love my job; I love the world that it is. But I don't want someone who is just in love with that world. I want to be with someone who is in love with me, warts and all.

I think that's what makes a successful marriage: a mindful sense of self and the ability to make clear choices to stay together or choices not to.

I think there's a big difference between loving someone out of duty and dependency and loving someone because you really are able to sort of grow and be whole in the context of that relationship.

I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn't perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.

For me, when I picture the person I want to end up with, I don't think about what their career is, or what they look like. I picture the feeling I get when I'm with them.

I think when you're looking for a lifetime partnership, intimacy is obviously a part of that.

When you can have a relationship that's like that to where everything is out in the open, you are up front, and there is open communication, it makes for a great relationship.

If you're with someone, it's because you're moving in the same direction, and you both are looking for the same thing. Both of you have to share the same concept of what a relationship means.

When women are trying to keep a man, just make sure it's a man that you want to keep. You know, he might be cute and drives this type of vehicle and has a nice little bank account, but is he really somebody that you would want?

There's no point in being a relationship if the two of you don't support one another.

A relationship will be futile if it's based just on physicality. Intellectual stimulation is a must for me.

Also, I thought the main reason people get married is to have children. And since having kids had never been of interest to me, I didn't think marriage was necessary.

I get off on finding new ways to tell my wife 'I love you.'

Ideally, we date the folks who are dating for the same reason we are.

If marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married.

When it all come down to it, the thing that matters most in a relationship is principles [...] We have the same idea what’s right and what’s wrong, and that’s got us through any number of things. If you can have that with someone, then you’re most of the way toward love. Not just lover-love. Any kind of love.

I am not against marriage -- I am for love. If love becomes your marriage, good; but don't hope that marriage can bring love. That is not possible. Love can become a marriage. You have to work very consciously to transform your love into a marriage. Ordinarily, people destroy their love. They do EVERYTHING to destroy it and then they suffer. And they go on saying, 'What went wrong?' They destroy -- they do everything to destroy it.