John Ortberg Quotes

I think being able to really fall in love with someone is the craziest thing that could ever happen. You know, allowing yourself to really go there and really feel those things is extremely scary.

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don't have the ability to be lovable.

I was 29 and I really fell in love, I think, for the first time. I was vulnerable in a way I didn't think I could be.

People who find that they have a lot of drama in their relationships need to allow themselves to get 'bored'. At first, it will feel excruciating, and they may find themselves confronting a very real fear underneath all that drama: being truly close and therefore vulnerable to another human being.

Sex isn't hard, but intimacy is terrifying.

Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them.

Why is it so unutterably beneficial, the thought that someone besides myself knows me?

I try to open up my heart as much as I can and keep a real keen eye out that I don't get sentimental. I think we're all afraid to reveal our hearts. It's not at all in fashion.

I've never fallen in love right off the bat. I get scared to say I love you too soon because it means so much. It means you're not seeing an end to things.

People are so fearful about opening themselves up. All you want to do is to be able to connect with other people. When you connect with other people, you connect with something in yourself. It makes you feel happy. And yet it's so scary - it makes people feel vulnerable and unsafe.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

It's really hard for me to be open and be completely honest with a stranger.

It’s scary telling someone you care about, someone you love who you really are.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.

We want to be in open, loving communion with each other and our greatest fear is intimacy. That it won't work and we'll be rejected.

If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.

You'd have to spend a lot of time with me before I'd be comfortable enough to show my dark side.

I'm a little bit afraid to give my heart away right now. It's very scary. I'm open to it, but I just want to make sure that I'm taking my time.

We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked... not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable.

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

It's not like you can wake up and realize, 'Oh, I want intimacy,' and then it happens that day.

I mean, I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone, you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out, I won't be able to get to know someone another way.

Be willing to share all of who you are. So many of us want a partner, but we're not willing to show all of us.