“Because I’d known our relationship wasn’t healthy, yet I’d let him twist me up over and over just so I could feel gratitude on the days he decided to help me untangle the knots he’d tied. I was never enough for him. Never what he wanted. Always begging for scraps of attention, perpetually left empty.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“Imagining that hurt. Someone to love. To care for me openly. To be proud to parade me around. To touch and hold and pamper me. Someone who thought I was enough.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“I’d never had the opportunity to be the kind of boyfriend I’d always wanted to be—too afraid of being too much, too afraid of scaring whoever I was dating off with my “intensity.” Too afraid of being rejected when they realized what was beneath my polished exterior.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“This man before me was someone else entirely. Not the suit-wearing, pen-wielding, dildo-carrying maniac from the line at security, but a person who had been beaten badly—so badly that when he’d finally gotten back up again, his feet didn’t understand whether or not they were on solid ground.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“I thought it was my fault. That I wasn’t worth the effort? Or maybe it was just normal to feel lonely, even when you were with someone.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“I stayed with him, Alex. Voluntarily. For a long time…I think I knew, deep down, it wasn’t right. But I stayed anyway. I stayed even though staying hurt. Because I hoped one day…I’d be…enough? That we’d be happy. That I could be what he wanted if I just folded myself small enough.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“What did it say about me that my “practice boyfriend” was better at taking care of me than the man I’d thought would be my life partner? How had I never noticed? Scratch that—of course I had. I just…I suppose I hadn’t thought I deserved better. It was an awful sort of feeling, to come to terms with the fact that Brendon had been a horrible boyfriend when I’d put him on a pedestal for so long.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“Some battles don’t have a winner. Sometimes the best a good general can hope for is a ceasefire”
Source: Tangled
“And yet here I was—falling for his charm when I’d promised myself I was done with this. That I would never let another man control my emotions. That I’d never give someone power over me again. I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t want to stop. Content to ride this train till the end, because for the first time in my life I was discovering what it felt like to be treated well. Which was…infuriating.”
Source: Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“It’s easier to ignore what’s in your heart if you pretend it won’t hurt you in the end.”
Source: Into This River I Drown