FA reluctant of meeting in person (20 year long love story)

- Helen needed the excitement, tension and emotional pain of loving an unavailable man in order to relate at all. She had virtually no capacity for intimacy, or even much tenderness, once she was no longer embroiled in the struggle to win Charles. Having been won, he was virtually discarded.

- Often it is observed that when two people who have been involved for years finally make a commitment (...) the excitement is lost (...) It may be because one or the other or both of them have overstepped their capacity for intimacy by making that very commitment. 

- Because they are incapable of any degree of intimacy with a man, they choose instead to live with a fantasy, a dream of how much they will love and be loved someday when their partner changes and becomes available to them. But they can be intimate only in fantasy. 

- What is important to understand is that it appeared that Russell was unable to love with much depth, while Monica, with all her patience and compassion, seemed to be very good at it. In fact, they were both equally deficient in the ability to love intimately.

- Nancy was working a lot harder than I was to get me to lose that weight. We both sort of acted like it was her project, her responsibility to make me better.

- attracted a woman who loved too much, who made another's well-being the core of her purpose in life. His helplessness and pain and her eagerness to help were the basis for their mutual attraction. 

- "Do you need me?" the woman who loves too much secretly asks. "Will you take care of me and solve my problems?" is the silent query behind the spoken words of the man who would choose her to be his partner.

- Women who love too much make these choices out of a driving need to control those closest to them. That need to control others originates in a childhood during which many overwhelming emotions are frequently experienced: fear, anger, unbearable tension, guilt, shame, pity for others and for self.

- Always, her tools for self-protection include a powerful defense mechanism, denial, and an equally powerful subconscious motivation, control. 

- Otherwise, we would have to face facts about who we are and what we think and feel that do not fit with our idealized image of ourselves and our circumstances. The mechanism of denial is particularly useful in ignoring information with which we do not want to deal. 

- Denial can be defined as a refusal to acknowledge reality on two levels: at the level of what is actually happening, and at the level of feeling.

- With practice she becomes very skilled at protecting herself from pain in this way, but at the same time she loses the ability to make a free choice about what she is doing. Her denial operates automatically, unbidden.

- because these strong and conflicting emotions are what she would have to contend with if she let herself feel anything, she prefers not to feel at all. This is the source of her need to control the people and events in her life. Through controlling what goes on around her, she tries to create for herself a sense of safety. No shocks, no surprises, no feelings. 

- It is not easy or comfortable for us to consider that selfless behavior, "beeing good," and efforts to help may actually be attempts to control, and not be altruistically motivated.

- When we do for another what he can do for himself, when we plan another's future or daily activities, when we prompt, advise, remind, warn, or cajole another person who is not a young child, when we cannot bear for him to face the consequences of his actions so we either try to change his actions or avert their consequences - this is controlling. Our hope is that if we can control him, then we can control our own feelings where our life touches his. And of course the harder we try to control him, the less we are able to. But we cannot stop.