Quotes & Sayings About First Relationships

Position yourself to succeed first by building good relationships with the right people; and then put your effort and expertise behind that! — Garrison Wynn

Not every girl has a bad-boy problem. Some of my friends get into relationships constantly. Others cheat all the time, or run away. Some get jealous. Some think they are too undateable to even try. Our dating pool is a circus of fuckups, misfits, and past mistakes that we keep on making. The brand of baggage you're carrying on your back is the issue. But most of all, I think we fear the same thing. I think that thing is love. Real love. Think of your first love. Think of how Bambi-like you were, prancing around all excited and in love with everything. Then think of how that happiness was beaten to death with a hatchet, spit on, shit on, leaving you cold. If you watch something you care about get destroyed, you're not going to want to go back to that place, no matter how pleasant it ever was. — Alida Nugent

Insanity is starting over a million times, expecting to feel the spark you never did the first time. — Shannon L. Alder

we know intuitively and from experience that we work better in a complex interdependent task with someone we know and trust, but we are not prepared to spend the effort, time, and money to ensure that such relationships are built. We value such relationships when they are built as part of the work itself, as in military operations where soldiers form intense personal relationships with their buddies. We admire the loyalty to each other and the heroism that is displayed on behalf of someone with whom one has a relationship, but when we see such deep relationships in a business organization, we consider it unusual. And programs for team building are often the first things cut in the budget when cost issues arise. The — Edgar H Schein

If I could do it all over again, I'd probably still leave. Except, this time, I would hold you closer, tighter, longer. I would kiss you a thousand more times, tell you I love you ten thousand more times, have sex with you one million more times. I didn't get it right the first time when you were mine. If I could it all over again, I would value your trust, stand by your actions, and never take score...even though I'm totally winning. So if you can just find it in your heart to shut the hell up and love me, I swear with every fiber of my being that I will spend every possible minute loving you." A smile that flirts with cruelty lifts on his mouth. "Your move. I'm wearing to many clothes. — Elisa Marie Hopkins

God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. He lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us. — John Eldredge

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about the breach. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend. — Anton Chekhov

Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It's hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, "You aren't pretty," and you go, "I know, I know, now let me find my earrings." Sometimes you say, "Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later. — Amy Poehler

So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first. — Heidi Barr

I'm really connected to people, and my relationships with people are paramount, so I write about relationships, particularly strong female ones. In my family, there were six girls born in five years. We were best friends. And my parents raised all of us as first-class citizens. — Alane Ferguson

When people ask about relationships, they always say, "How did you guys meet?" Not, "OMG, tell me about your third year! And when a relationship is in trouble, the desperate couple is always trying to recapture the magic of when they first met. The real tragedy is that, without time travel or amnesia, it's impossible to ever get back there. Which is why to most people, marriage is about as magical as watching David Copperfield make Claudia Schiffer disappear. — Shane Kuhn

If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change. — David W. Earle

So, you want to be in a relationship and you're tired of being single, right? But let me ask you an important question: Do you have a healthy relationship with yourself? I get it! Everybody wants to be in love and feel loved, but trust me, SELF-LOVE is far more important. How is YOUR mind, YOUR body, YOUR spirit? Listen, it's okay to be single! You may not want to be single, but sometimes it's best. Learn to commit to yourself, first. Be good to yourself, take care of yourself, and love yourself! You've got to like and love who YOU are before you can give your very best to that special someone. Don't be in a rush and don't be desperate. Work on yourself first and be at peace. — Stephanie Lahart

Mr. Beecher used to say that the first thing for a man to do, if he would succeed in life, was to be careful to "choose a good father and mother to be born of. — John C. Carlile

First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here? — Tim Dorsey

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. — Robert Penn Warren

Guys get a bad rap for not wanting to talk about their feelings but maybe women are in part to blame for that. One thing that I learned from working with people where English was not their first language was this: just because they don't speak your language doesn't mean that they're dumb. Maybe we just need to talk more slowly, use simpler words and have lots more patience. — Dermot Davis

The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle ... For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no matter where it came from.
But those lesbians who had carved some niche in the pretend world of dominance/subordination rejected what they called our 'confused' lifestyle, and they were in the majority. — Audre Lorde

I have a theory about soul mates
that God wants to be our sweetheart. And once we fall in love with life and have an intimate relationship with Spirit, that's when we meet our soul mate. It's as if God says, 'You're not meant to be alone on this earth. I just wanted you to love me first. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Entrepreneurial management in the new venture has four requirements: It requires, first, a focus on the market. It requires, second, financial foresight, and especially planning for cash flow and capital needs ahead. It requires, third, building a top management team long before the new venture actually needs one and long before it can actually afford one. And finally, it requires of the founding entrepreneur a decision in respect to his or her own role, area of work, and relationships. — Peter F. Drucker

..All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family - in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future. — Harriet Lerner

These relationships are driven by much more than charisma or a good first impression. They are based on integrity and delivering on promises. They are based on genuine care for others. For some second chairs, building relationships is easy and natural; for others it is hard work, but for all it is essential. — Mike Bonem

At first, I thought 'this series is going to be all about death and desecration,' but instead became a more complex landscape of human relationships. I hope I put something of these feelings into the portraits that I made of the characters, which were landscapes in themselves. An irony in the subject of crystal meth is how beautifully it resembles the desert sky. — Ralph Steadman

It seemed like so much of romantic relationships today have to do when the people are not in the same room. Whether it's texting or emailing or Facebooking, there's a kind of distance between the participants. I think it's sort of shifted the energy of that first romantic meeting, where it's quicker, perhaps more desperate, more energetic, in a whole different way, and it's resulted in a situation where people seem to be sometimes more comfortable having a sexual relationship than an emotional one. — Ivan Reitman

Genuine relationships depend first on a healthy relationship with ourselves. — Sonia Choquette

Don't let a thief into your house three times. The first time was enough. The second time was a chance. The third time means you're stupid. — C. JoyBell C.

That's why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocean and share a burger and talk and even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn't constantly trying to impress me. You accepted who you were, but more than that, you accepted me for me. And nothing else mattered
not my family or your family or anyone else in the world. It was just us. — Nicholas Sparks

Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining. — James Hillman

Imagine a problem in psychology: to find a way of getting people in our day and age - Christians, humanitarians, nice, kind people - to commit the most heinous crimes without feeling any guilt. There is only one solution - doing just what we do now: you make them governors, superintendents, officers or policemen, a process which, first of all, presupposes acceptance of something that goes by the name of government service and allows people to be treated like inanimate objects, precluding any humane or brotherly relationships, and, secondly, ensures that people working for this government service must be so interdependent that responsibility for any consequences of the way they treat people never devolves on any one of them individually. — Leo Tolstoy

You can't experience the Father's embrace until you first embrace your earthly father's experience. — Bob Parr

You win by cultivating the right culture, leadership, expectations, beliefs, mindset, relationships, and habits before you even play the game. You win in the locker room first. Then, you win on the field. — Jon Gordon

Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. — Lev S. Vygotsky

I think art parallels life; it is not a report on nature or on intimate disclosure of inner secrets. Color, in my opinion, behaves like man
in two distinct ways: first in self-realization and then in the realization of relationships with others. — Josef Albers

we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds. — Alain De Botton

Boyfriend huh? I didn't realize we had taken things to that level."
"Oh, I'm sorry
this is my first undercover operation," Jordan said. "I'm a little unclear about the rules. Are we seeing other people in this fake relationship? — Julie James

Next to the first Henry and Meg, Henry had written, "Promise?"
Well, that genie's out of the bottle and there's no stuffing her back in. — Laura Anderson Kurk

There don't have to be first dates and second dates. We're not normal. We can do this anyway you want. A relationship can be whatever you want it to be. We get to make this part up. We get to tell our own story. — Holly Black

From the Bible we can surmise that God will ask us two crucial questions: First, "What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?" God won't ask about your religious background or doctrinal views. The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."17 Second, "What did you do with what I gave you?" What did you do with your life - all the gifts, talents, opportunities, energy, relationships, and resources God gave you? Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them for the purposes God made you for? — Rick Warren

I think people are having less of an investment in relationships. It used to be that you meet someone, you go on four or five dates and you gradually get to know them and trust them at the same time, and you learn a little bit about them. Now, it could be one date - maybe even before that first date - you go on Facebook have all the information. — Ashton Kutcher

Such disappointments, betrayals and reconciliations were the stuff of married life, but she and Jack had gone through them before the wedding. Now, at least, she felt confident that she knew him. Nothing was likely to surprise her. It was a funny way to do things, but it might be better than making your vows first and getting to know your spouse afterward. — Ken Follett

Love is warmth. It's the inside jokes. It's the reassuring touch. It's the late night talks. It's the finding of common interests. It's the sharing of ice cream. It's the crying shoulder. It's the acceptance of what's ugly. It's the first time you see her without make up. It's the first time you see him pick his nose. — Nessie Q.

I feel that flip-flops are the downfall of many relationships. It's, like, first it's the flip-flops, and then it's the sweatpants ... it's the gateway drug to no sex. — Lady Gaga

Clay, if anyone followed anyone, it was me tagging along after you. I didn't dare order you around."

"Load of shit," he muttered, but she thought she heard a softening in his tone. "You fucking made me attend tea parties."

She remembered his threat before the first one: "Tell anyone and I'll eat you and use your bones as toothpicks."

~ Talin and Clay dialogue — Nalini Singh

It was more than love at first sight. For Mallory it was as if a dam had burst and the impounded emotions of a young lifetime had found immediate release. — Wade Davis

Often we withhold our affections, waiting first for love to be extended to us. The irony is that we are loved for loving. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I look at him with the nostalgic affection men are said to feel for their wars, their fellow veterans. I think, I once threw things at this man. I threw a glass ashtray, a fairly cheap one which didn't break. I threw a shoe (his) and a handbag (mine), not even snapping the handbag shut first, so that he was showered with a metal rain of keys and small change. The worst thing I threw was a small portable television set, standing on the bed and heaving it at him with the aid of the bouncy springs, although the instant I let fly I thought, Oh God, let him duck! I once thought I was capable of murdering him. Today I feel only a mild regret that we were not more civilized with each other at the time. Still, it was amazing, all those explosions, that recklessness, that Technicolor wreckage. Amazing and agonizing and almost lethal. — Margaret Atwood

Paradoxically .. the very feminist movement that gave women more options also helped create pressure on many of us to be strong, successful, and independent - the kind of women who would theoretically be immune to any form of abuse from men. As a result, women who are in gaslighting and other types of abusive relationships may feel doubly ashamed: first, for being in a bad relationship, and second, for not living up to their self-imposed standards of strength and independence. — Robin Stern

Most people think of love as some sort of power outside of themselves that will "take them away from all of this." Sadly, this is not the case. Love exists only within our own hearts, and to have happy relationships we must first become truly loving people. And as we fill our hearts with love by expressing love for others in thought, word, and deed ("acting as if" until we make it happen if necessary), that love can heal our own lives, help to solve our problems, and enable us to feel good about ourselves. — John Templeton

But I was coming to learn that much of your perception of a relationship is shaped by everything else that happens to be going on in your life at the time. When I first met Ed Farley, I had been starved for love. He was the first man I'd ever known to show me kindness. Hr had taken my loneliness away. And for that I knew I would always be grateful. But being grateful was not enough of a reason to stay with someone. — Patricia Park

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey. — Kathryn Joyce

First you will feel your inner transformation in your outer relationships, and then you will go deep. Then only will you begin to feel something inner. But we have a settled attitude about ourselves. We don't want to look into relationship at all, because then the naked face comes up. — Rajneesh

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle. — Shannon L. Alder

Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them. — Sarah Dunn

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother's so easily wiped away. But no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. — James Baldwin

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.

If only she had walked out there and then. — Cleary James

The key to success is letting the relationships in your life grow to the highest levels they possibly can ... not putting yourself first in life and remembering that the more you give away, the more you have. — Christopher Reeve

I had a dream about you. In my dream I stole all your money, kidnapped your parents, and mailed you mannequin parts spray-painted red in a series of packages that also included ransom notes. Then, towards the end of the dream, the cops surrounded my cave and swarmed in to arrest me. Sweating, my eyes shot open, and I realized it was a dream. "Of course it's a dream," I thought. "The cops have no idea where my cave is, and your first package has yet to be delivered." — Dark Jar Tin Zoo

First, make sure you get into a relationship for the right reasons. (I'm using the word "right" here as a relative term. I mean "right" relative to the larger purpose you hold in your life.) As I have indicated before, most people still enter relationships for the "wrong" reasons - to end loneliness, fill a gap, bring themselves love, or someone to love - and those are some of the better reasons. Others do so to salve their ego, end their depressions, improve their sex life, recover from a previous relationship, or, believe it or not, to relieve boredom. None of these reasons will work, and unless something dramatic changes along the way, neither will the relationship. — Neale Donald Walsch

You must be committed to your children first. Otherwise, they will receive the leftovers. — Lorilyn Roberts

For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first. — Suzanne Collins

We are all responsible to Jesus first, and then, under him, to various other persons and offices. Discerning the path of love and obedience when two or more of these submissive relationships collide is a call to humble, Bible-saturated, spiritual wisdom. — John Piper

The fire within her, and her soul, were eclipsing my own. — Ruth Ahmed

There's something I have to say," I said seriously, looking her in the eye.
She smiled. "Oookay." She was mocking me-mocking my tone-but I didn't care.
"Okay. Here it is. I love you," I said. "And I never, ever wanted to hurt you. It's like, the number one thing I never want to do, but somehow, I keep doing it. And I'm sorry, I just ... that's all I wanted to say all this time. All I was trying to do ... with that thing with your dad, not telling you ... was not to hurt you. And I'm sorry that I did.
Alley stared at me.
"And I'm sorry that I did it again. With the Chloe thing. Which was stupid. Like, really, really, stupid. And I-"
"Can you just stop, for a second?" Ally said, holding up a hand.
"What?" I said.
"Can you say the first part again?" she asked, rolling her fingers around for a rewind.
I racked my brain.
"Um ... I love you?" I said.
"That's the part, Cuz I love you, too. — Kieran Scott

The fact that I'm very close with my past relationships is something I pride myself on. My mom is still close to her first husband. It's nice to be able to enjoy someone in a different form. — Kate Bosworth

9:37, the west wall of the Pentagon was hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757. The crash caused immediate and catastrophic damage. All 64 people aboard the airliner were killed,as were 125 people inside the Pentagon (70 civilians and 55 military service members). One hundred six people were seriously injured and transported to area hospitals.192 While no emergency response is flawless, the response to the 9/11 terror= ist attack on the Pentagon was mainly a success for three reasons:first,the strong professional relationships and trust established among emergency responders; second, the adoption of the Incident Command System; and third, the pursuit of a regional approach to response. Many fire and police agencies that responded had extensive — Anonymous

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules. — Mike Mills

Love is a form of energy, and similar to all forms of energy, it is both essential for life and dangerous. Love can enrich a person's life or destroy a person's world. Love is a catalytic agent of change because it makes us dare to become the best person that we can be. Falling in love for the first time drives a person to the cusp of madness, while the bitter aftermath of a love lost irrevocably alters the positive and negative aspects of a person's character. Withstanding rejection by a lover, we discover within us those ingredients that we will need in order to find our life mate and complete ourselves as man and woman. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I wait until her breathing is soft and even against me before I let myself drift off to sleep, like I've been doing every night for the past few weeks. Slowly, everything in my life is turning into putting her first, and I'm not going to fight it. — Carian Cole

Treat each event you attend and each person that you meet as if it were an appointment with your one of your best clients -- even if you are meeting that person for the very first time. — Timothy M. Houston

Love; I consider true love happens once in a lifetime. I really don't understand when people love someone and marry someone else. Either they never loved anyone at first place or they befool themselves by saying that we have moved on. — Ritu Chowdhary

Since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You can't love someone just by looking at them. That is lust. Not saying love can't come fast, but it doesn't come first. — Teresa Mummert

When you're a girl, passion can dominate the equation, but as you grow up relationships evolve. Mad passion can grab you at first, but it can't last forever. — Jody Watley

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death
in a cesspool. — Charles Bukowski

One of the trickiest things about 'Game of Thrones' is just seeding those first couple of episodes with that basic information that people need to know, both about the world and the ground rules of the world, and the relationships between the characters, as far as who means what to whom and why. — D. B. Weiss

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking. The recognition of regularity in the courses of the heavenly bodies and in the succession of seasons first provides a basis for a systematic ordering of events, and this knowledge makes possible a calendar ... Simultaneously with this concept, a system of relationships comes into the idea of the world. Change is not something absolute, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic; its manifestation is a relative one, something connected with fixed points and a given order. — Hellmut Wilhelm

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you
if you happen to be me
with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you. — Charles Baxter

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women. — Kenneth Fenter

Yet all of us are vulnerable to intense, nonproductive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family - in particular, losses and cutoffs. — Harriet Lerner

The first thing I plan to do is what I did while serving in Arizona's legislature - and that was to seek out members that I often disagreed with on important issues. It was through our authentic relationships and mutual respect that we found common ground on legislation that helped people. The challenge for Congress is to move past the harsh partisanship that we saw in the last term. This is a critical step in advancing policies that will strengthen and protect LGBT families. — Kyrsten Sinema

People who find that they have a lot of drama in their relationships need to allow themselves to get 'bored'. At first, it will feel excruciating, and they may find themselves confronting a very real fear underneath all that drama: being truly close and therefore vulnerable to another human being. — Tracy McMillan

For the first time in history, men and women are seriously exploring the possibilities of relationships based on separateness rather than togetherness. Instead of clinging to Yahweh, to a rigid set of laws established by a jealous Father-God who will rant in fury if he is disobeyed, they are simply ignoring that ranting, walking away from it, and attempting to put their trust in the irrational. In other words, they are trying to live by the spirit. — Marion Woodman

Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas. Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that no matter what we experience in our childhoods, no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness, no matter the extent of our dehumanization, romantic love will be ours. We believe we will meet the girl of our dreams. We believe 'someday our prince will come.' They show up just as we imagined they would. We wanted the lover to appear but most of us were not clear about what we wanted to do with them-what the love was that we wanted to make and how we would make it. We were not ready to open our hearts fully. — Bell Hooks

Nodding, Parker ate. "He's an exceptional kisser."
"He really is. He ... How do you know?" When Parker just smiled, Emma's jaw dropped. "You? You and Jack? When? How?"
"I think it's disgusting," Mac muttered. "Yet another best pal moving on my imaginary ex."
"Two kisses, my first year at Yale, after we ran into each other at a party and he walked me back to the dorm. It was nice. Very nice. But as exceptional a kisser as he is, it was too much like kissing my brother. And as exceptional a kisser as I am, I believe he felt it was too much like kissing his sister. And that's how we left it. I gather that wasn't an issue for you and Jack. — Nora Roberts

Twitter has the sustained ability to not get all touchy when I forget to "favorite" and thus had me at the first entirely inappropriate tweet flung my way. — Jennifer Harrison

Human relationships with predators have always been thorny. Predators are the first creatures our kind purposely eradicates. Too often, people feel humans are and should be in control; we are enraged to discover this is not true. And when other creatures share our appetites and kill our livestock (often animals we were raising to kill, ourselves), we call them vandals and murderers ... Predators are the most persecuted creatures on Earth. — Sy Montgomery

Maybe she'd never really known her mother at all. And if you couldn't know the person whose body was your first home, then who could you ever know? — Brit Bennett

Adam wasn't certain what came first with Blue
her treating the boys as friends, or them all becoming friends. It seemed to Adam that this circular way to build relationships required a healthy amount of self-confidence to undertake. And it was a strange sort of magic that it felt like she'd always been hunting for Glendower with them. — Maggie Stiefvater

I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood. — Joe McNally

When love comes first, actions will follow. — Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back. — Damon Suede

Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you. — Emma Forrest

Sure relationships can be fun at first, but then you get to know each others quirks, and those quirks become quarks, and those quarks combine and become hadrons and scientists love to combine hadrons in giant hadron colliders and they create black holes! — Craig Benzine

At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve
cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too. — Michael Paterniti

It's the opposite of the collapse of the fantasy.
It's what happens when the illusion pales in comparison to the truth. I'm seeing her for the first time. Not Ava Garden Wilder, the rags-to-riches granddaughter of Clyde Jones. Not a tragic, romantic heroine.
Just Ava.
And I am utterly in love. — Nina LaCour

Love is a flicker. It's that hidden desire. It's the words you're afraid to say. It's stolen glances. It's the passive-aggressive hints. It's the mixed signal. It's the first brush against his hand. It's the first time you daydream about her. — Nessie Q.

The ceremonial oat tour."
She reaches in the shopping bag and takes out the milk bar with almonds, ripping it open.
"It must be so hard for guys in relationships - to have just one girlfriend completely devoted to taking care of all your whole-grain needs. I can see how at the first opportunity you'd just have to get out there and - sow. — Emma McLaughlin

He had stood there looking around him, hunting someone, and had not found whoever it was and turned to go; but in turning, he caught sight of Emily and paused and looked at her again, and then frowned and went on out. She had not actually been introduced to him for another week. But now it seemed to her that at his entrance
swinging through the library door, carrying a single book in his hand (his fingers fine-textured and brown, his shirtcuffs so perfectly white)
her life had suddenly bee set in motion. Everything had started up, as if complicated wheels and gears had finally connected, and had raced along in a blur from then on. It was only now, in this slowed-down room, that she had a chance to examine what had happened — Anne Tyler