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Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

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Elizabeth Gilbert is an American author renowned for her best-selling novel 'Eat, Pray, Love'. Born on July 18, 1969, she has achieved widespread acclaim for her compelling storytelling and personal narratives. Gilbert's writing frequently delves into themes of self-discovery and transformation.

Famous Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

“Rayya had delivered a perfect death blow—because she, of all people, knew just how to kill me. She knew exactly where my deepest insecurities were hidden. She knew I’d received messages since childhood that my “emotional bullshit” was too much trouble for anyone to deal with. She knew I was terrified that I would always drive away the people I loved by being too needy, too clingy. She knew I’d spent most of my life trying to show people only the “good parts” of me because I was sure that if they saw the pain and fear and need that lurked below the surface, they would find me repulsive and reject me. She had in fact witnessed the most unlovable parts of me, and had once seemed to love them. But now she was telling the truth: I was disgusting, and she hated me. And it was with that wicked, blistering sentence—“I wish we’d never gotten together”—that Rayya had taken the last bits of my broken heart and ground them beneath the heel of her motorcycle boot, pulverizing me into grains even finer than cocaine. Grinding me down until there was nothing left of me. And that was exactly what she’d meant to do to me—for daring to confront her.”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Here’s the thing about withdrawal, from any drug, substance, person, or behavior: The reason it’s so excruciating is that not only do you have to feel the pain of losing access to that thing you desire more than anything else, but you also have to feel the pain of every other loss you have ever experienced along your life’s journey. All the previous failures, all the previous crashes, all the previous disappointments. It’s like a twenty-car pileup of failures on an icy highway, and there’s no way to get away from it. Worst of all, withdrawal forces you to feel your original suffering again—the deepest childhood grief or ancestral wound that started you out on this journey of addiction in the first place. And who wants to feel that?”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Addiction serves a purpose. It is medication for an aching soul, relief for a pained body, and escape from an impossible mind. Addiction is a pretty good survival strategy when all your other strategies for living have failed. As Rayya used to tell me, “I needed every gram of heroin I ever took back in the day, or I would have never made it out of my childhood alive. I could not have survived without my buffer of drugs.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Attentive readers may remember that I had started attending twelve-step meetings when Rayya was on cocaine and my world was falling down around my ears. You may also remember that I’d hated every minute of those meeting—although I did take some notes. You may not be surprised to learn, then, that I had stopped attending those meetings as soon as I could—which in my case meant: as soon as Rayya stopped using cocaine and started being nice to me again. Because all my problems were solved after that, right? I mean, why should I have to attend a recovery program designed to support people whose lives are affected by the addictions of others if my “other” wasn’t acting out in her addiction anymore? And why should I have to attend meetings for sex and love addiction when I was actually getting love again, from someone I was devoted to? Anyhow, I’m way smarter than most people, and I had quickly breezed through all the literature—so I figured that I basically understood all the principles of these programs and had learned all I needed to learn. Obviously. So I had walked out of the rooms of recovery in late October of 2017 like, Thanks for all the information, everyone—I’m all set now! Nice meeting you! I’ll take it from here! Except that I wasn’t all set, because I have never been “all set.”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“What if everything in Earth School is working exactly the way it’s supposed to be working, in other words—by teaching us things we can learn in no other way? What if everything (and everyone) that we label as “difficult” or “an obstacle” or even “dysfunctional” is in fact a deliberately designed construct meant to awaken us to our true natures—a divine crowbar, you might say, that is sent by the cosmos to knock down the doors of our ignorance, demolish our illusions, and give us the opportunity to move past our fears, find our innate courage, propagate wisdom, and help us to remember that we are of God? Of course we cannot know if this is how fate works, because none of us know how fate works. But in my life, I have certainly found that the Earth School model is a useful thought exercise during times of darkness, pain, and betrayal—for it takes me out of a victim mentality and offers up a worldview that feels far more empowering and fascinating than the limiting, anguished cry of “Why me?” A more fruitful question than “Why me?” could be “How might this terrible situation be perfectly designed to help me to evolve?”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“What is the overgiver getting out of this obviously imbalanced arrangement? Or at least, what do they think they’re getting? Because nobody overgives for no reason—even if those reasons are deeply hidden or disguised as acts of pure altruism. So what is the payoff, exactly? In my case, the payoff has always been love—or at least, the desperate hope of love. And how far am I willing to go—how much will I extend myself, exhaust myself, burn myself out, or manipulate, seduce, soothe, manage, and control others—in order to get my own hidden needs and hungers met? Are you kidding me? To earn love? I will give up everything I have. I will overgive myself right to the edge of annihilation. But only always.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“I have caused tremendous harm to myself and others through my decades of sex and love addiction. I have inserted myself into other people’s relationships, and I have broken up families. I have lied to myself and others. I have hurt people whom I promised to cherish. I have crossed boundaries with friends; I have run away from people who cared about me and toward people who didn’t. I have cheated on people and allowed myself to be cheated upon. I have tried to buy love with money; I have triangulated, strategized, and manipulated. I have seduced people and discarded them, just as often as I have been seduced and discarded. I have committed and accepted shameful objectification. I have used other people’s bodies as drugs (both sedatives and stimulants). I have treated my own body with terrible disrespect—and I have never been able to stop. The closest I’ve ever come to suicide is because of my sex and love addiction, and also the closest I’ve ever come to murder.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“My problem is what’s officially called a “process addiction,” as opposed to “substance addiction,” which was Rayya’s downfall. Process addictions are characterized by extreme compulsivity around certain behaviors—gambling, shopping, hoarding, eating, sex, control, obsession, gaming, skin picking, etc. Put simply: Rayya was addicted to drugs; I am addicted to people. Although I do believe that Rayya was a love addict, as well. In fact, many folks in the rooms of recovery surmise that love addiction is at the bottom of all the other addictions. Our famished yearning for love is the great yawning chasm that we keep trying to fill with other things—with drugs, alcohol, food, money, sex, cigarettes, gambling, gaming, success, perfectionism, workaholism, internet addiction, you name it. Of all the human desires, the need to feel loved is the most fundamental. When unmet or perverted at a tender age, that need can warp our brains into making dangerous and even insane decisions for the rest of our lives.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“From what I now understand, given the latest neurological research, people like me—people with process addictions—have nervous systems that don’t work quite right. Many of us, having experienced at a young age what are officially referred to as “consistent disruptions of safety,” have trouble regulating our own emotions, taking care of ourselves, telling fantasy from reality, understanding the concept of boundaries, knowing whom to trust, and distinguishing our feelings from other people’s feelings. As a result, we can end up with an attachment style that is sometimes referred to as “disordered-disoriented”—which describes my romantic history perfectly.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Over the years, I’ve used plenty of alcohol and drugs (both legal and illegal) in order to get numb or high—but not nearly at the level that I have used people. I don’t actually need alcohol and drugs to alter my consciousness, because the pharmacy built right into my brain churns out enormous amounts of dopamine as a reward for the experience of sexuality, physical closeness, and emotional arousal—and at a rate that is esti mated to be ten times higher than that of a so-called normal person. And it’s not only dopamine that my brain overproduces when I’m infatuated with someone; it’s also adrenaline, oxytocin, serotonin, and norepinephrine. When combined in a powerful rush, these hormones fill me with an almost godlike sense of euphoria, removing my ability to feel pain or calculate risk, warping my perception of reality, and taking away my desire for sleep, food, and fulfillment of other basic life-supporting needs. Other people might experience pleasurable sensations from romance, fantasy, or sex; I get wasted.”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Like all addicts, then, I have suffered—and I have been the cause of suffering in others. Like all addicts, I have kept secrets. Like all addicts, I have lived a double life. Like all addicts, I have always kept a hidden stash of supply to keep me from jonesing. (In my case, “supply” would be potential love interests, with whom I was constantly flirting, texting, temperature checking, and testing the waters—in case I needed them someday.) And there is nothing cute or harmless about flirtation when I engage in it. I’ve heard it said before that drug addicts steal people’s money, but love addicts steal people’s time, energy, and emotional attention—which is even worse, because those thefts hurt people at the level of their heart, at the deepest core of their being. Those thefts leave wounds that may never heal—deep wounds to all involved.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Like many addicts, I always suspected there was something wrong with me. I was a full-on romantic obsessive by the time I was in grammar school (I can still tell you the birthday of every boy I had a crush on in second grade). I knew I was out of control by the time I reached high school, when I kept bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend, from drama to drama, never able to find peace with anyone. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I knew that my friends didn’t act the way I acted. My early twenties were an even bigger mess, as I shipwrecked my heart and body upon one rocky shore after another. But I always thought I could get myself under control by using willpower and common sense—or by finding a new partner. And many times over the years I did pull myself together. I got over it and found someone new or even better. Many times, I believed I had this problem solved—only to discover that I super did not have this problem solved.”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“The line between a problematic behavior and an addiction is a murky one—perhaps even invisible. But a good test as to whether you’re an addict or not is to answer these three questions as honestly as possible: 1. Have you tried to stop this behavior and you can’t? 2. Have you managed to stop at times—but you can’t stay stopped? 3. Has your behavior brought consequences to your life that might cause a normal person to say, “Wow, I’ll certainly never do that thing again!”—yet you keep doing that thing?”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t stay stopped; I kept doing that thing. No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“I did things for and within that relationship that no sane or emotionally stable person would ever do. And I woke up at the end of that encounter exactly the way another kind of addict might wake up in a motel room somewhere off the highway outside Vegas, wrecked and bewildered, with no memory of how she had gotten there—and not sure where that fresh new tattoo had come from, either. Blinking in the blazing sun, wondering where her money went, and asking in devastated confusion, “How did that just happen?” Or maybe it would be more accurate to ask: “How did that just happen again?”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Partially, the reason I don’t blame anybody for my problems is because I don’t think it’s particularly useful to hold others responsible for my fate or for my behaviors. But I also believe that the people who harmed me had no more control over their compulsive actions than I’ve ever had over mine. And that is nobody’s fault. We are all descended from the same confounding human bloodline, after all—every one of us born of the same long and tangled lineage of addicts and their enablers; narcissists and their prey; the mentally ill and their beleaguered civilian orderlies; abusers and their apologists; manipulators and martyrs; secrets and secret keepers; suicides and sorrows. Beautiful people, so many of them. Beautiful, talented, extraordinary people who all struggled. Beautiful, talented, extraordinary, and terrified people who were all seeking something outside of themselves that could relieve them from their interior pain. I’m just one of the lucky ones who finally found her way to the rooms of recovery.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“The whole time I was getting involved with Rayya—becoming her friend, falling in love with her, walking all the way to the river with her, being driven to the edge of madness by her awful relapse into active drug addiction—I didn’t know that I was suffering from a dangerous addiction, too, which was leading both of our hearts into treacherous territory. I mean, I knew I was plenty messed up, in terms of my romantic relationships, but I didn’t know I was an addict. And I certainly did not know that, over time, I would become just as addicted to Rayya as she was to drugs. My addiction doesn’t mean I didn’t love Rayya; I always loved her, and I always will. My addiction merely means that I needed Rayya at a level that was far beyond healthy. I came to believe, quite literally, that I could not live without Rayya—that a world without Rayya’s attention and infinitely calming ministrations was a world not worth enduring. Driven mad by fear and longing, I tried to drain all the love from Rayya into me before she died—as though through some crazy emotional blood transfusion. In so doing, I turned into a vampire, which is what all active addicts eventually become. And the whole time we were together, Rayya didn’t know she was an addict, either. Meaning: She had forgotten. Like all addicts, Rayya had a disease that lied to her—a disease that told her she didn’t have a disease. Forgetting that she was powerless over her drug addiction, she slid into a relapse. And then she became a vampire, as well.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“How you can tell you might be in a codependent relationship: You care more about somebody else’s well-being than they do, and/or you believe that you cannot function without them, and/or you believe that they cannot function without you. The codependent’s motto: 'You break it, we fix it!”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“What codependency feels like at first: “You complete me!” or “I will be your hero!” What codependency feels like later on: watching in horror as someone else’s life passes before your eyes; wondering in utter bewilderment where your own life went. The final destination of codependency: rage, emptiness, loneliness, despair. The anthem of the exhausted codependent: “After all I’ve done for you!”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“On the surface, I appeared to be a confident young go-getter. But my inner life was, as it had always been, a tremulous fear-scape. I was neither mature nor emotionally secure, and I wasn’t yet ready for the demands of adulthood. Hidden beneath all my apparent ingenuity was a terrified child constantly asking, “Who’s got me? Who will keep me safe? Where do I belong?” And thus I began my lifelong quest to make other people into my home.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“I once estimated that between the ages of twenty and forty-eight, I lived in approximately twenty different homes. That’s not everywhere I stayed (that number would be incalculable); it’s merely everywhere I lived—everywhere that had my actual name on the lease or the mortgage. And I never lived alone. I couldn’t bear to live alone. I couldn’t bear being alone with the open wound that was my own mind. But I also couldn’t bear the chafe and strain of intimacy. I couldn’t last anywhere, and I couldn’t last with anyone. So I came and went, colliding and separating, roaming the planet, constantly looking for places to land and people to merge with. I sometimes used to call this behavior “being a free spirit,” but my wild instability was quite the opposite of freedom, because I had no agency in the matter—only urgency. Also, if I was so “free,” why did I always end up feeling trapped? It’s because my moves were motivated by desperate situations in which I was running either toward somebody or away from somebody else. I constantly found myself in stories that started out with passion but ended up with shame. So much shame, in fact, that during those years there were entire geographic regions that I had to flee at top speed, because my behavior had created dramas that made it impossible to remain there for another day. Goodbye, Philadelphia! Adios, Oaxaca! Well, I guess I can never go back to Wyoming again!”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes how addicts always end up “puzzled and humiliated,” no matter how hard they try to get their lives straight. That’s how I have always felt at the end of my relationships: puzzled and humiliated. And because I have a lifelong tendency to fall in love with people who are either alcoholics or addicts themselves or the adult children of alcoholic or dysfunctional families, my partners were always in a state of disarray, as well. They brought their own disorder to my already disordered life, which added exponentially to my upheavals. One of my most chaotic relationships, for instance, was with a man who, at the time we met, was being fired from his job, breaking up with his girlfriend, and getting evicted from his apartment—all at the same time. “Move in with me!” I said, naturally enough. And so I welcomed him—this heartbroken, unemployed stranger (who, like me, was clearly struggling to find his way in the world)—into an apartment I’d rented for myself only a week earlier.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“It’s worth questioning, in every partnership: Who is playing the traditional role of the woman here?—meaning, Who is pouring more care and nourishment into this relationship (or project, or institution)? And who is the beneficiary of all that care and nourishment? And what is the cost to the overgiver?”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Rayya loved the truth. Truth was her religion, her passion. When I asked her why she loved the truth so much, she explained that after so many years of having to hustle and lie as an active drug addict, the truth felt like heaven to her. Truth was her place of safety, a badge of honor, and proof of her recovery. What’s more, she believed that being honest was just the simplest path through life and the surest means of eliminating confusion and drama. “The truth has legs,” she used to say. “It always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will be the truth. Since that’s where you’re gonna end up anyway, I figure you might as well just start there.” Maybe this notion sounds obvious to you, dear reader, but to me it felt like divine revelation. I had never before encountered such directness in a person, nor had I ever witnessed someone who placed such trust in the power of simple and unblinking honesty. I had not grown up feeling that the truth was a place of safety—and for reasons that I will not go into here, it wasn’t. From earliest childhood, my survival strategy was to always give the pleasing answer, never the truthful answer, because it felt safer to be pleasing than to be truthful. So I learned how to read other people’s faces and discern what they needed to be told in any given moment in order to keep them calm and happy. This vigilance turned me into a nervous child, constantly monitoring the room to stay ten steps ahead of everyone else and—when I sensed tension coming—misdirecting everyone's attention, or creating some sort of spontaneous and distracting entertainment, or simply running for the hills. It was a tough job for a little kid—making sure nobody around me ever got angry or sad, or disappointed.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“One of the central characteristics of sex and love addicts is that we assign magical qualities to people, and then we become enraged when those people fail to live up to our fantasies, expectations, and projections.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Once Rayya got clean and sober, she never judged people, no matter how badly they were acting out. She never condemned them—not even when she was angry or frustrated with them, not even when she was setting boundaries with them—because she knew what it was like to be at the very bottom. She knew what it was like to be feared and despised. She knew what it was like to live completely outside of your own integrity, a million miles away from your heart. As she said to me once, “Until you’ve stolen money from your father’s wallet to buy heroin while he was sick in a hospital bed, you don’t know what it feels like to need to be forgiven.” She also used to say, “Mercy is what I owe, because mercy is what I always needed—and mercy is what I have been given.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“That night at dinner, I thanked Rayya for taking care of everybody at the funeral, and for protecting us from the dangerous young man. She looked surprised, then her face softened. “Oh, honey,” she said, and suddenly tears stood in her eyes. “Did you think I was protecting us? No, baby, no. I was protecting him. Because here’s the reality, babe: We’re fine, and we’ll always be fine—even if he stole our car! Nobody needs to worry about us. But the odds are that kid doesn’t have much longer to live. He’s really far gone, and he doesn’t have any support system. But there’s always a chance he might get clean some day, with a miracle. And if he ever cleans up his life, as part of his recovery he’ll have to make amends to every single person he’s ever harmed. And I don’t want that poor kid, in addition to everything else he’ll have to face someday, to be forced to deal with the fact that he stole money from people at his grandmother’s funeral. I wouldn’t want that for anybody. So that’s what we were doing today, honey. We were keeping him safe from that—from the worst thing he could do to himself.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“A friend of mine who is familiar with both my messy relationship history and my recent recovery journey asked me the other day, “So where is the line, exactly, between regular love and love addiction?” To which I could only reply, “I’ve got bad news for you, buddy. Nobody really knows.” It’s the same with all addictions. When does a regular drinker become a heavy drinker? And when does a heavy drinker become a problem drinker? And when does a problem drinker become an alcoholic? And when does an alcoholic become a danger to themself and others? It’s often impossible to know exactly when, how, and why these escalations occur. In the rooms of recovery, this is called “the invisible line”—that shady moment when complete dependency sets in, and the addict is no longer capable of living a manageable or dignified life. The invisibility of that line is a large part of the reason that identifying and treating addiction is so difficult. It’s also why addicts of all varieties are so masterful at denying that they have a problem in the first place, and why they are so good at gaslighting and deceiving their loved ones. But if I had to define the difference between regular love and love addiction, I would say that it has to do with the level of intensity—with the sense of urgency, dependency, and desperation that grows by the day until it becomes an obsession, trailing behind it a wreckage of lies, destruction, and self-abandonment. And once that hungry ghost is awakened, it can never really be sated.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“Secrecy is the greenhouse in which addiction blooms, flourishes, and metastasizes. The unfortunate reality of addiction, though, is that all active addicts keep secrets and tell lies. They really have no choice. An addict must lie in order to protect her supply. You cannot be an active addict without lying, because your interior world would collapse. If you didn’t have access to the substance, person, or behavior that regulates your nervous system, and your exterior world would collapse if people knew what you were up to—because what you are up to is not socially acceptable. Hell, what you are up to might not even be acceptable to you, which is how addicts learn to lie to themselves before they lie to anyone else. Thus the addict’s reality becomes split between what she’s doing in the shadows (sometimes even behind her own back) and what she is allowing other people to see.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Ssla

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“This book is not only for people whose lives have been negatively impacted by their own addictions or by the addictions of others—although I do believe those two categories will include pretty much all of us, at some time or another. This book is also about the many ways that people—despite their best efforts at living sane and stable lives—can sometimes get swept into high-octane dramas and traumas, finding themselves washed up on shores that can feel very distant from their true natures.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“How the hell did I get here? is a question that I believe everybody will have to face at some point during their passage through life. Perhaps even at multiple points. For who among us has never gotten lost, much to our own embarrassment? Who has not ended up in scenarios that are frightening, alienating, shameful, and spirit-crushing? Who has not kept secrets, or been betrayed, or tried to control the behavior of others? Who has not longed for escape from suffering? And who has not reached for substances, people, behaviors, or distractions that offer temporary respite from the built-in discomforts of existence itself?”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“It is my way—it has always been my way—to become captivated by other people’s charisma and madness and wildness and beauty. To disappear into their stories and become hypnotized by their existence. To become lost in a trance of themness and to forget who I am, what I am, and where I stand.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“There are not a lot of women out there who will publicly admit to being sex and love addicts, because it sounds pretty gnarly. In fact, it is gnarly. I won’t get into salacious details here, but I will say that my addiction manifests as a sincere yet deeply misguided belief that somebody outside of myself will miraculously be able to heal me on the inside—thereby making me feel safe, cherished, and whole at last. In real-life terms, this translates as a desperate need to have my existence constantly authenticated and re-authenticated through a romantic partner’s touch, eye contact, verbal reassurance, acts of love, or mere physical presence. How much reassurance is enough for me to finally feel secure? There has never been enough, frankly. There can never be enough.”

Love Relationships Addiction Addiction And Recovery Codependency Love Addiction Sex And Love Addiction Addiction And Recovery Quotes Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous Slaa

Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“My desperation to be loved is certainly outsize, and it has caused me to act out in ways that are undeniably insane. Yet I suspect that parts of my story may feel familiar to many of my readers—especially my female readers, who, like me, may have been socialized since birth to believe that they did not possess much inherent value but were estimable only insofar as they were capable of making themselves attractive enough to be chosen. Failing to succeed in this massively important project of proving yourself worthy of being chosen meant that you were a failure, and that nothing else you ever manifested would have much significance in anyone’s eyes. Or at least that’s what endless generations of women across a multitude of cultures have been taught—and that’s what I was taught, too. Sex has always been the fastest and most direct way for me to feel thoroughly chosen, but what I’m really looking for in my romantic encounters is the love, attention, validation, and approval (“LAVA” in the parlance of recovery) that other humans can sometimes provide, and without which I have often felt like I would quite literally die. Thus I have spent my entire life searching for that magical person who will see me and save me—whether in the short term or the long term. When my plan for salvation with one person didn’t work out (and it never worked out), I just went looking for LAVA with someone else.”

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Book:All the Way to the River

Source: All the Way to the River

“To even talk about not having a partner makes the story about me not having a partner. What is actually happening in the ecosystem of my spiritual life and my physical life and my emotional life is that a garden is blooming. . . . It isn’t about who isn’t here. It is about what is here.”

Love Relationships Solo Single Self Actualization

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“What all couples have ever wanted, a little bit of privacy in which to practice all manners of love.”

Love Marriage Marriage Equality

Book:Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?”

Book:Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“And love is always complicated. But still humans most try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Love Heart Broken Heart Breaks

Book:Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?”

Love Power Eternal Questions

Book:Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Marriage is a game. They (the anxious and powerful) set the rules. We (the ordinary and subversive) bow obediently before those rules. And then we go home and do whatever the hell we want anyhow.”

Book:Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.”

Love Marriage Commitment

Book:Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

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Book:Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.”

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Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”

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Book:The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.”

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Book:Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you... There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”

“In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”

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Book:The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”

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Book:Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

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Book:The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims