Martha Nussbaum, Esther Perel, Adam Phillips, bainpickings.org, quotes

"Human beings appear to be the only mortal finite beings who wish to transcend their finitude. Thus they are the only emotional beings who wish not to be emotional, who wish to withhold these acknowledgments of neediness and to design for themselves a life in which these acknowledgments have no place. This means that they frequently learn to reject their own vulnerability and to suppress awareness of the attachments that entail it. We might also say … that they are the only animals for whom neediness is a source of shame, and who take pride in themselves to the extent to which they have allegedly gotten clear of vulnerability."
...

"Notice, then, that shame is far from requiring diminished self-regard. In a sense, it requires self-regard as its essential backdrop. It is only because one expects oneself to have worth or even perfection that one will shrink from or cover the evidence of one’s nonworth or imperfection. To the extent that all infants enjoy a sense of omnipotence, all infants experience shame at the recognition of their human imperfection: a universal experience underlying the biblical story of our shame at our nakedness. But a good development will allow the gradual relaxing of omnipotence in favor of trust, as the infant learns not to be ashamed of neediness and to take a positive delight in the playful and creative “subtle interplay” of two imperfect beings."

..

"The emotions of the adult life sometimes feel as if they flood up out of nowhere, in ways that don’t match our present view of our objects or their value. This will be especially true of the person who maintains some kind of false self-defense, and who is in consequence out of touch with the emotions of neediness and dependence, or of anger and aggression, that characterize the true self."

"The understanding of any single emotion is incomplete unless its narrative history is grasped and studied for the light it sheds on the present response."

Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions

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"Love is not a structure in the heart waiting to be discovered; it is embodied in, made up out of, experiences of suffering."

Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge
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"If love is an act of imagination, then intimacy is an act of fruition. It waits for the high to subside so it can patiently insert itself into the relationship. The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two."

"Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused — when two become one — connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex."

"We long to create closeness in our relationships, to bridge the space between our partner and ourselves, but, ironically, it is this very space between self and other that is the erotic synapse. In order to bring lust home, we need to re-create the distance that we worked so hard to bridge. Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life."

"Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go."

Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity

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"However much you have been wanting and hoping and dreaming of meeting the person of your dreams, it is only when you meet them that you will start missing them. It seems that the presence of an object is required to make its absence felt (or to make the absence of something felt). A kind of longing may have preceded their arrival, but you have to meet in order to feel the full force of your frustration in their absence."


Adam Phillips, Missing out

Martha Nussbaum, quotes, on anger and forgiveness

"Trust … is different from mere reliance. One may rely on an alarm clock, and to that extent be disappointed if it fails to do its job, but one does not feel deeply vulnerable, or profoundly invaded by the failure. Similarly, one may rely on a dishonest colleague to continue lying and cheating, but this is reason, precisely, not to trust that person; instead, one will try to protect oneself from damage. Trust, by contrast, involves opening oneself to the possibility of betrayal, hence to a very deep form of harm. It means relaxing the self-protective strategies with which we usually go through life, attaching great importance to actions by the other over which one has little control. It means, then, living with a certain degree of helplessness.

Is trust a matter of belief or emotion? Both, in complexly related ways. Trusting someone, one believes that she will keep her commitments, and at the same time one appraises those commitments as very important for one’s own flourishing. But that latter appraisal is a key constituent part of a number of emotions, including hope, fear, and, if things go wrong, deep grief and loss. Trust is probably not identical to those emotions, but under normal circumstances of life it often proves sufficient for them. One also typically has other related emotions toward a person whom one trusts, such as love and concern. Although one typically does not decide to trust in a deliberate way, the willingness to be in someone else’s hands is a kind of choice, since one can certainly live without that type of dependency… Living with trust involves profound vulnerability and some helplessness, which may easily be deflected into anger."

"Being heard and acknowledged is a reasonable wish on the part of the wronged party, and asking for truth and understanding is not the same thing as asking for payback. Indeed, it often helps the Transition. However, often the extraction of acknowledgment shades over unpleasantly into payback and even humiliation, and this temptation should be avoided."


"Intimate relationships are perilous because of the exposure and lack of control they involve. Being seriously wronged is a constant possibility, and anger, therefore, a constant and profoundly human temptation. If vulnerability is a necessary consequence of giving love its proper value, then grief is often right and valuable. It does not follow, however, that anger is so."


https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/03/martha-nussbaum-anger-and-forgiveness/?mc_cid=cfcc87c790&mc_eid=d4633eff0a


...well..well written...i am in a position where i might conclude this is all in fact too dangerous for me,
a long time...
Martha Nussbaum writes on status seeking. 
Here I am not seeking status but a home felt, not a house built and fixed, neither in place nor mind, but trust, care, warmth and love. 
Arms open to welcome me with joy whenever joy can be present.
Without too many re-occuring thoughts on anger, hurt, mistrust and bad past from both sides. 
Without being defined and mirrored to be and behave such and such, 
without being pre-cut and pre-defined in my role and context and flowing out and towards.
I accept it happening but not as a preliminary context, being warned off again and again , burdened with an unfortunate but real  threat towards me 
as a living physical being in my very connection to the roots of life.
I was told quite often that i am "traditional" and "romantic".
But..I am just alive and totally unwilling for a sometimes nearly constructed relationship 
appearing again and again based on de-construction of expectancy 
and disturbed by passionate opposition to words, values, ideas, 
a relationship for periods more analyzed and feared than lived.
Therefore I don't know if love can be in my life now. I found, lost, found...for many months, presence, joy, love, suffering, life. I met death too. i met myself. as always-
not so pleasant, it is for nobody.
my trust is minimal by now, and hope has reached a low level. 
and i do behave badly, manage badly, meet too much insecurity, my own
and the kind inherent in relationship , also  obstruction and anger  in it
where i want peace but cannot keep it.

i don't wish to expect anything at all anymore. But this makes me ...sad.
Sad and free.

I am willing to be surprised. That is all. Maybe i can do the same. How should i know.
Life and love are astonishing BECAUSE they cannot be defined. 
The always imminent loss of life and of love gives them their meaning, maybe.

I'd be happy if i could just give...and keep giving out of heart.