The most common pattern for couples that divorced went like this: the wife would bring up an issue, the husband would get belligerent or defensive, and then the wife would reciprocate with sadness, disgust, or stonewalling. In the couples whose marriages lasted, instead of escalating negativity, both partners showed humor and affection.
They took responsibility for their problems and found ways to compromise.
They sent signals that even though they were fighting, at a deeper level, they were okay.#134•
Resilience in love means finding strength from within that you can share with others. Finding a way to make love last through the highs and lows. Finding your own way to love when life does not work out as planned. Finding the hope to love and laugh again when love is cruelly taken from you. And finding a way to hang on to love even when the person you love is gone.#119•
As Allen Rucker wrote about his paralysis, "I won't make your skin crawl by saying it's a 'blessing in disguise.' It's not a blessing and there is no disguise. But there are things to be gained and things to be lost, and on certain days, I'm not sure that the gains are not as great as, or even greater than, the inevitable losses."#171•
Dave's funeral, I said that if on the day I walked down the aisle with him, someone had told me that we would have only eleven years together, I would still have walked down that aisle. Eleven years of being Dave's wife and ten years of being a parent with him is perhaps more luck and more happiness than I could ever have imagined#118•