How can this chasm be crossed? I think it requires a leap of faith—by both partners, but today maybe especially by women. She must choose to effectively make her own reciprocal form of sacrifice. Not of herself, but of her initial self-centeredness in the relationship. She has to subdue the self-interested pragmatism of her own nature, with its relentless desire to optimize, and choose him as the man he is, flaws included. This further requires recognizing the full value of the sacrifice he is offering her in his role, and the legitimacy of the claim, in a sense, this makes on her. Her own sacrifice is then a submission, not so much to him—though it may look that way to outsiders—but to loyalty and trust in him.

— N.S. Lyons, The Self and the Soul