"Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected."

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Source: Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.247, W. W. Norton & Company

About the author

Rollo May

Psychologist, Author

Rollo May was an influential American existential psychologist known for his works on love, creativity, and the human condition.

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