Alexander Lowen Quotes

Ideal love is fostered only between two sincere, mature and independent people. Real love is not two people clinging to each other; it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality.

It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.

I don't need to control anything. Even with romantic partnerships, I don't need to control anyone.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Too many people get married and lose themselves. You have to fiercely hold on to who you are, and you need to celebrate that in the other person because that's what made you fall in love in the first place.

Other than marriage, she doesn't control me and I don't control her.

I think its wonderful to have a relationship where you both go out and live your lives, and you bring something to the table because you've had other interactions.

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.

Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.

Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.

My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish. But it was not an infatuation, and here’s how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus. During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was.

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.

We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.

In true love, you attain freedom.

. . . and I don’t expect him to suborn his life into mine any more than I would change my dreams for him. We’re not one soul, one being, however much we love each other.

I've always been very independent. Even in relationships, I'm focused on the quality of my life and not enmeshing myself so much with somebody else's experience. But I think there's incredible value in being married.

Rather than look at a marriage as two people morphing into one thing, you could see two individuals who are choosing to form a partnership.

Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

Look for someone who has a complete life without you in it. If you have a person you don't need for anything, that's ideal. You're just together because you really want to be.

If we are happy within ourselves, we don't accept or demand that our partner should fulfill every need. We need to be comfortable with our own company.

The best thing that can happen in a relationship is when you are the same person you were before the relationship started. You are not hiding anything, and you still have a life of your own. The other best thing is sex - that is a super positive.

A woman doesn't just love a man. She loves who he is. And, who he is is dependent on what he needs.

I'm a much healthier person through my relationship with my husband. I've become a more fulfilled person - it's a great partnership.

I think as humans we do want to control our relationships, and you can't. It's probably better that you can't. That wouldn't be a real relationship, and we'd never learn and grow.

Real people are places to me as much as persons: I want to see them, as I want to see the places I am fond of, in all weathers and at all times of the year.