Strained Relationships Quotes

A trustworthy leader goes the extra mile to remedy strained relationships, even when it doesn't appear to be required. ~ John C. Maxwell

Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him. ~ Meg Rosoff

Blame is the lie by which we convince ourselves that we are victims. It is the lie that robs us of our serenity, our generosity, our confidence, an our delight in life ... For it is the act of blaming that can't co-exist with self-responsibility
or with freedom from inner agitation and strained relationships. Abandon the practice of blaming, and we see the fear melt away that we have associated with being honest about ourselves and taking the full measure of responsibility for our emotional and spiritual condition. ~ C. Terry Warner

I looked up and she said, "You have to believe I did everything a reasonable person would do. Maybe I didn't reach my hands into toilet water, but I did everything else I could. ~ Charlie Close

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to the one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. ~ Sherwood Anderson

If it's meant to be, it will happen naturally. ~ Mary Higgins Clark

I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties. ~ Anne Lamott

The way that we think is dependent upon our flowering formal and informal education. How we think affects our behavior. How we conduct ourselves in the unscripted interactions with our family, friends, and lovers alters our emotional being. Our emotional being funnels our thought processes. Our community modulates our actions and establishes standards for behavior, and our logical reasoning and moral reasoning skills evolve as we mature. The didactical association between education, thinking, behaving, communal relationships, and the ongoing process of making logical and moral decisions continues to shape unions and disunions of our transforming character. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When you are your own best friend, you don't endlessly seek out relationships, friendships, and validation from the wrong sources because you realize that the only approval and validation you need is your own. ~ Mandy Hale

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

The love we say we feel for another is, in most cases, just a selfish hunt for our own happiness. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

You like the gentleman, then?" said Muna.
"I don't dislike him," said Henrietta unpromisingly.
[...]
"I don't dislike cabbage," Muna found herself saying, "but I should not consider marrying it. Not disliking seems a poor foundation for future happiness. ~ Zen Cho

Restorative justice is more interested in relationships. A crime is not act against a rule, it's an act against a person. When you harm somebody, you owe it to them to make things right. By making things right, you begin to heal your relationship with the community. Our system is focused on blame and punishment and not on healing and learning. - Lauren Abramson (RJ Program in Baltimore, MD) ~ Dashka Slater

Some women had more penises in their mouth than men had kisses in theirs but it's a relationship that clarifies their worth. ~ Kent Lamarc

Trevor, make sure your woman is the woman in your life. Don't be one of those men who makes his wife compete with his mother. A man with a wife cannot be beholden to his mother. ~ Trevor Noah

I suspected that most marriages were more complicated than couples tended to let on. That summer, it seemed like every week brought news of another pair in our community who were splitting up. They were all around our age, most with little kids, trying to run their own businesses in a small economy. The evidence of those breakups directly contradicted the rosy way relationships were portrayed on Facebook, in public. I began to believe that future generations would study how we represent our long-term partnerships, and call us on our lies, in the same way we look at the way the Victorians depicted sex and know that it simply wasn't like that, not behind closed doors or in the hayloft. We hide marital conflict with the same sense of decorum. We'd do more good if we were honest and set realistic expectations for what it's like in the long run. ~ Kristin Kimball

None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female's psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what's central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. ~ Norman Buckley

All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multicolored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism for the occasion. There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck. ~ Douglas Adams

I believe the relationships and emotions you experience when you have success are the things that last forever. ~ Matt Holliday

Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do. ~ Stephen King

This is a proud day and an important step forward in the fight for equality in Britain. The overwhelming majority of Labour MPs supported this change to make sure marriage reflects the value we place on long-term, loving relationships whoever you love. ~ Ed Miliband

Saying hello doesn't have an ROI. It's about building relationships. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

I know what LDR means, but I don't know what does it feel, because though we are miles apart, distance couldn't beat love. I still feels like we are together, always. ~ Krizha Mae G. Abia

Mind control aims to change a person to the very core by altering their decisions, perception, beliefs, values, behaviors and relationships. ~ Jeffery Dawson

I read once that the best thing that can happen to a woman is to get her heart broken. Before that, she has no real sense of herself. No real sense of pain, because only in love does she know what it's like to find the one thing that gives her breath and then to lose it.
After that, she knows she can survive. No matter what relationships come and go, she can count on herself to pull through, and although it hurts, the break is necessary ~ Colleen Hoover

But happiness is a difficult thing-it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, is is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love. And in this country, where people move from state to state and city to city so much, where rootlessness is almost a virtue ("anywhere I hang my hat ... is someone else's home"), where family units regularly implode and leave behind fragments of divorce, where the long loneliness of life finds its antidote not in a hardy, ancient culture (as it would in Europe), not in some blood-deep tribal rites (as it would in the few still-hale Third World nations), but in our vast repository of pop culture, of consumer goods, of cotton candy for all-in this America, happiness is hard. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

How they became friends was no great mystery, but now they remained so, braided together beyond their shared college quarters, this transcended the usual alchemy of optimism and obligation that kept friendships intact, kept people from fading into other categories: old friend, college friend, just someone I once knew. None of the four would ever be just anything to the others... ~ Elizabeth Ames, The Other's Gold

Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel.
"You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says. ~ Suzanne Collins

Especially when you're working so closely with people and you have to develop intense relationships, it's great when you have a relationship and a rapport with them. ~ Dominic Sherwood

The Church commends the law-makers for their prompt reaction to outlaw same-sex relationships in Nigeria and calls for the bill to be passed since the idea expressed in the bill is the moral position of Nigerians regarding human sexuality. ~ Peter Akinola

Becoming a good listener, you are able to connect with others on more levels and develop stronger, deeper relationships. ~ John C. Maxwell

Being single is a great thing. Some people can't do it
or are afraid to do it. Many people lose themselves in their relationships and forget who they are instead of learning from the other person and bettering themselves. ~ Elise Valmorbida

When he's with me, we are both here. Right here. ~ Marie Marquardt

No one should ever be punished for feeling love. ~ Julieanne O'Connor

In order to improve our life for good always remember that regardless of what anyone else says and does, we are ultimately responsible for our own actions. This is the only way to experience victory, joy, and satisfaction every day of our lives. ~ Donald Pillai

You do not need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends you can be certain of ~ Itzik Amiel

Little kids play house; they play war; they play relationships. ~ John Green

And though it seemed odd that she still didn't know his name, something kept her from asking. Those two little words, she knew, would inevitably set off a chain reaction: first Google, then Facebook, then Twitter, and on and on, mining the twists and turns of the internet until all the mystery had been wrung out of the thing. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

The best relationships in our lives are the best not because they have been the happiest ones, they are that way because they have stayed strong through the most tormentful of storms. ~ Pandora Poikilos

One day, someone will say "I love you" and you will hear "family". That is a love worth surrendering to. ~ T. V. Smith

(In reference to swingers) In the meantime, if you wish to declare yourself polyamorous, get used to the fact that the confusion is gong to remain as a pejorative. Sure, clear up the misunderstanding as much as you can, but don't put too much effort into setting yourself up as a "good", responsible, community-oriented polyamorist by contrasting yourself to the "bad" swingers - they may not be your siblings, but they're definitely your cousins. ~ Anthony D. Ravenscroft

For many years, I picked the wrong men, or they picked me. I think if you don't feel attractive or worth something as a woman, you attract men who don't really look after you. That's what happened to me, but I realise that those relationships were like a journey, helping me to learn something about myself. ~ Lesley Nicol

We must bear in mind, however sadly, that psychopathology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the degenerate and perverse. The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra -these are games that anyone can play. Their violence, and all violence for that matter, reflects the neutral exploration of sensation that is taking place now, within sex as elsewere (...). Were all this leads one can only speculate (...). What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations. ~ Ballard James G.

When he had promised himself that he wouldn't try to repair Jude, he had forgotten that to solve someone is to want to repair them: to diagnose a problem and then not try to fix that problem seemed not only neglectful but immoral. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

I used to take hostages in my relationships and not let people be independent. It always ended in disaster, because you take away people's identity and they end up full of resentment. ~ Elton John