Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble.

Fear is a message - sometimes helpful, sometimes not - but often conveying critical information about our beliefs, our needs, and our relationship to the world around us.

Love alone is never a good enough reason to marry.

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.

The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.

We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview.

Before modern feminism, stories of female ambition were silenced or erased; even now, they are told with apology ("Yes, it's a great honor to be a Nobel Prize laureate, but really, what I love best is staying home and being a mother to Kevin and Annie").