I got a letter today from a writer I haven’t heard from in over a decade, maybe longer. We didn’t end on a bad note, we just ended or so I thought. Are agents and clients supposed to mate for life? Some break ups are as bad as marriages and I know I’ve handled my fair share badly. Never purposefully, but I didn’t have the poise, the skill, the courage to say what I felt or needed. I know an agent who broke up with clients by not returning their calls and emails. “Eventually,” she said, “they take the hint.” The goal is to stay together, to keep inspiring and enjoying the mutual admiration society of two, to feel that we are in this rat fuck together.
What’s the secret to long term relationships?
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Betsy Lerner 
Respect and love.
As almost everyone knows it is not complicated – the problem is that it is just very difficult sometimes. So it’s just three things; work like there’s no tomorrow to understand the other’s position, and when you can’t just let understanding go – it can be over- rated anyway, inasmuch as it does’t always change how we feel in the way we had hoped it would; We must try to respect everyone’s limited abilities to understand, especially our own. 2) Work like fuck to find some middle ground where each person can manage and contain their disappointment, and frustration, while still feeling good (enough) about themselves and you. 3) let go of your anger – put it into the wind if you can, and if it isn’t windy, then just put it into the garbage pail; then work to feel the hurt underneath; (there is always hurt and feelings of helplessness beneath anger. But our hurt will gradually fade, and it usually will heal. Even if it doesn’t we can live with it and it is far preferable to anger, which can become invisible, or very cleverly disguised. No matter how brilliant the disguise it will still literally poison almost every aspect of life, usually in ways that we will never even see, or know.
Listening, and never, ever giving in to mean impulse.
Lola and I will soon celebrate our 45th. I joke that for all this time, she’s been the luckiest woman alive, but that’s not so. I’m the lucky one.
“What’s the secret to long term relationships?”
Being forgiven, being forgiving, being responsive, being receptive, being patient, being unafraid.
“What’s the secret to long term relationships?”
I’d say mutual goals are important, too. If my expectations are different from yours, no one’s going to be happy.
When you figure it out let me know.
Kindness, a sense of humor, and blow jobs.
Also, ghosting a client to get rid of them is childish and shitty. We should treat each other better than that.
I’ve always thought the key was mutual respect, the realization that what’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for someone else, and the ability to laugh at ourselves. Some days, though, I think the best way to achieve harmony in a relationship is a lobotomy.
Understanding where the other person os coming from