Isn’t it frustrating that on one hand you know that you’re supposed to have nice relationships with everyone, and yet you have almost no relationship with anyone that actually is nice? It’s a real grain of sand in one’s soul… as well it is intended to be!

If it weren’t for the fact that we recognize, however slightly it is, that our irritation with the person that we’re with has something to do with us, then there would never be a chance for us to discover anything greater than what we presently call our idea of love.

The world that you and I live in has almost no idea at all about love. Real love takes work. You say, “I know; I’ve been carrying this guy for about forty years!” That is not the work it takes. Just like a garden, you have to do a lot of work when you first put in the seeds. The work that has to do with love in a relationship has nothing whatsoever to do with bearing the unpleasant manifestations of another person, but of bearing what is unloving in you when those unpleasant manifestations reveal that un-lovingness in you. That is the work.