Joko Beck Quotes

Conflict is easy because we've all had conflict, but to really bond with someone and to have a genuine connection, it needs to come from a place by knowing them.

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.

But I think if it's the right person, you wouldn't have to work so hard at intimacy. I think—hope—it would just happen naturally. Otherwise, opening up to the wrong person..." I made a face. "Like putting ammo in their hands.

Trouble is part of your life - if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

Physical intimacy is easy. Emotional intimacy is hard.

You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.

Our culture is all about shallow relationships. But that doesn't mean we should stop looking each other in the eye and having deep conversations.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

I believe the best friendships are forged with those you can be yourself with.

The level of comfort that people feel with me has taken some getting used to.

Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.

It's too easy to be myself with you.

I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

If you have a built-in level of respect and trust and openness to essentially be yourself, it allows for a deeper uncensored communication [with your partner].

That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

I’ve won his heart, but it’s like owning a house in which most of the doors are permanently locked. He wants to shield me from all unpleasantness. And it’s not really marriage—not like the marriage you have with Cam—until he’s willing to share the worst of himself as well as the best of himself.

Pretentiousness repels but authenticity attracts, and vulnerability is the pathway to intimacy.

I think that, for a lot of us, the closer we get to showing people who we really are, that's where we feel the most uncomfortable, the most vulnerable. But it's also where the healthiest growth comes from. Like when I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens.

He loves me." "You sound surprised." "Nobody ever did. Not like this. It's easy to say, for some people. The words. But it's not just words with Roarke. He sees inside me, and it doesn't matter.

Telling each other the truth and being who we are, and having space for the other person's vulnerability in being who they are, allows us to move in a kind of dance together that's very fluid and graceful.

One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure - a willingness to let our partner enter into the interior of our private world and a genuine interest in the private world of that partner. Couples in love tend to show more of themselves to each other than to any other person.

To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.

One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the humming bird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.