9 Quotes Prove Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has All the Relationship Advice You'll Ever Need
There's a reason Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known as the Notorious RBG: She's a badass. As an advocate for women's rights, a champion of same-sex marriage and one of the only three female justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg is constantly making history.
In addition to being a political liberal powerhouse, Ginsburg had an extraordinary love affair with her husband, Martin Ginsburg, for 56 years, until his death in 2010 from metastatic cancer. Their marriage, the Washington Post noted, was one of "mutual respect and equality," something especially unique for the Ginsburg's generation and crucial for her career. Marty Ginsburg reportedly once told a friend, "I think that the most important thing I have done is to enable Ruth to do what she has done."
Having had a marriage that was equal parts love and partnership, Ginsburg is the exactly the type of woman with relationship advice worth listening to. Relationships aren't easy, no matter how much advice you get, but when a successful woman married to such a supportive partner for over half a century starts talking, we should all be taking notes.
On respecting intelligence
"Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always — well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was. So we went to law school. And he told everybody, all of his friends, and he was one year ahead of me, his wife was gonna be on the Law Review." — The Rachel Maddow Show
On being friends as well as lovers
"Well, my best friend was my dear spouse. Marty was always my best friend." — The Rachel Maddow Show
On making compromises
"In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other. So, for example, when Marty was intent on becoming a partner in a New York law firm in five years, during that time, I was the major caretaker of our home and child. But when I started up the ACLU Women's Rights Project, Marty realized how important that work was." — The Rachel Maddow Show
On treating each other as equals
"Marty had a wonderful sense of humor. He thought that I must be pretty good because why would he decide that he wanted to spend his life with me? He always made me feel like I was better than I thought I was. He was so confident in his own ability that he never regarded me as any kind of threat." — Elle
On building a partnership
"If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me." — Katie Couric for Yahoo
On child-rearing
Marty "also decided — and I was very lucky about this — that when my daughter was born, he read something that said the first year is very important, that's when the child's personality gets formed, so he spent a lot of time with my daughter when she was a baby." — Elle
On taking deep breaths
"When Marty and I were temporarily miffed by something one or the other of us said or did, I would take several deep breaths and remember that tempers momentarily aroused generally subside like a summer storms." — The Right Words at the Right Time by Marlo Thomas
On "having it all"
"You can't have it all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough." — Katie Couric for Yahoo
On the underrated value of earplugs
"In every good marriage, it pays sometimes to be a little deaf." — The New Yorker
