Game Over Marriage Quotes & Sayings

So you think that most people bet everything, their whole lives, on hope. Just hoping that what they're feeling is real.'
'Real isn't relevant,' Georgie said, turning completely to face Heather. 'It's like ... you're tossing a ball between you, and you're just hoping you can keep it in the air. And it has nothing to do with whether you love each other or not. If you didn't love each other, you wouldn't be playing this stupid game with the ball. You love each other
and you just hope you can keep the ball in play.'
'What's the ball a metaphor for?'
'I'm not sure,' Georgie said. 'The relationship. Marriage. — Rainbow Rowell

I thought marriage was tough. Golf's like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It's a psychological game that gets into your blood. — Sylvester Stallone

Many guys see relationships with women as a zero-sum game: If she wins, he loses. Marriage is the ultimate contest: Her job is to get him to capitulate to marriage. So many men see marriage as the "end of freedom," the end of boyhood. That's why bachelor parties are supposed to revel in that boyish irresponsibility "one last time." So many guys figure, "Why rush into something that means basically that you'll be a prisoner forever?" — Michael Kimmel

That's the thing about marriage. It's a shell game we play with ourselves. We're the suckers and we have to lose, but we play anyway because we lie to ourselves that we can win. — R. K. Milholland

The game of chess. Supposedly men made it up, and it's about war and men and the ravages and the bravery and the genius of commanding and moving pieces and ... No. It's marriage. The Queen moves anywhere she wants. — Bill Cosby

A man is always a little shamefaced on his wedding day, like a fox caught in a baited trap, ensnared because his greed overcame his better judgment. The menfolk laughed at Charlie that spring day, and said he was caught for sure now. As the bride, I was praised and fussed over, as if I had won a prize or done something marvelous that no one ever did before, and I could not help feeling pleased and clever that I had managed to turn myself from an ordinary girl into a shining bride. Now I think it is a dirty lie. The man is the one who is winning the game that day, though they always pretend they are not, and the poor girl bride is led into a trap of hard work and harsh words, the ripping of childbirth and the drubbing of her man's fists. It is the end of being young, but no one tells her so. Instead they make over her, and tell her how lucky she is. I wonder do slaves get dressed up in finery on the day they are sold. — Sharyn McCrumb

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome. — Jerry Seinfeld

I had a girlfriend when I was 17-18, and when she was 21, she wanted us to get married. I couldn't do that, because my game was my priority. We had to part ways, and there was no guilt because I had never committed to marriage. — Suresh Raina

Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction based as much as on narcissism as on sexual pleasure. Later, they would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria as well as shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this, they cut themselves from any possibility of happiness - a condition indissociable from traditional and transient emotions which are incompatible with the practice of reason - but in doing so they hoped to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. — Michel Houellebecq

I have come to the conclusion that women believe marriage is proof that they have worth. It is the ultimate game of choosing sides for teams. It is hard to be picked last, but not to be chosen at all is unbearable - especially if you know that you are a good player and can help the team. Not only are you excluded but you also have to stay around and watch the game. — Kristen McMain Oaks

Marriage is the only game where the trapped animal has to buy the license. — Dan Poynter

I think the overriding message would be that love is serious business. True, down-to-the-crap love is not for the shallow or faint of heart. People are messy. Marriage is messy. You have to bring your best self to the game despite your limitations. — Ka Hancock

Ender's Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984 ... It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute. — Orson Scott Card

[On marriage and permanent attachment:]
Well, well
the prizes all go to the women who 'play their cards well'
but if they can only be won in that way, I would rather lose the game ... [C]lever [women] bide their time
make themselves indispensable first, and then se font prier [=play hard to get]. Clever
but I can't do it. — Dorothy L. Sayers

People like Sean Penn, he is someone that is politically progressive and yet is still at the top of his game in the industry. So I love that he is out there just virtually shaming all the people that voted for Prop 8. He was a really great example of a straight ally, someone who used his talent and used his ability to further our cause, not just for political progressiveness but also specifically for gay marriage and specifically for Harvey Milk's entire life. — Margaret Cho

You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it, but most don't have enough, so they become watchers of game shows, y'know, things like that. Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something, and you get married, like marriage is a victory and you have children like having children is a victory, but most things people do are a total grind, marriage, birth, children, it's something they HAVE to do because they have nothing else to do. There is no glory in it, no esteem, no fire, their lives are flat and the earth is full of them. Sorry, but thats the way I see it. I could not accept the snail's pace 8-5, Johnnie Carson, merry christmas, happy new year, to me it's the sickest of all sick things. — Charles Bukowski

It is noteworthy that few works of fiction make marriage their central concern. As Northrup Frye puts it, with his accustomed clarity: 'The heroine who becomes a bride, and eventually, one assumes, a mother, on the last page of a romance, has accommodated herself to the cyclical movement: by her marriage ... she completes the cycle and passes out of the story. We are usually given to understand that a happy and well-adjusted sexual life does not concern us as readers.' Fiction has largely rejected marriage as a subject, except in those instances where it is presented as a history of betrayal
at worst an Updike hell, at best when Auden speaks of it as a game calling for 'patience, foresight, maneuver, like war, like marriage.' Marriage is very different than fiction presents it as being. We rarely examine its unromantic aspects. — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

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. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Every friend, every neighbor, and every family member wishes that you retain your golden heart. No one wants to see your love sullied. Yet, they all know a dark circumstance will find you eventually. Know this: You are being hunted
like game. Life will knock you down with some unexpected misfortune. Resolve now, to help your partner get back up. Only a determined family kills its wounded. When everyone else abandons him, come back for your husband.
pg 55 — Michael Ben Zehabe

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractivess will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman "lets herself go" or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart. — Timothy Keller

Marriage is just an elaborate game that allows two selfish people to periodically feel that they're not. — Paul Reiser

I come from divorce. I'm only doing marriage once. It's not a game for me. — Shia Labeouf

Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him. — Harper Lee

My life changes dramatically every time I get up out of bed. After my proposal life changed in that I wasn't asked to change. I always thought that marriage meant someone was going to ask you to stop being who you were. And I met someone who not only wants me to be who I am but likes it. So, my life changed in that my views towards marriage stopped being morbid. I found I was ready to be a good partner where I don't think I was a very good partner to people before. I stepped up my game. — Sandra Bullock

All good marriages need outside support, so we need to seek out the right and appropriate sources. These should be people who are not only safe, but whose influence on us strengthens the marriage bond. Find people who are "for" your marriage and want to help you grow together. Avoid those who play the game of "poor you, being married to that bad person. — Henry Cloud

Mr. Christ, I read you as an infinitely patient entity who, as they say, often works in mysterious ways, a rebel unafraid to take the tougher, less traveled paths. Seems to me you're playing the long game. Is that why more states are coming out in favor of marriage equality? Is that why the Affordable Care Act is now with us? — Henry Rollins

Maybe you should think about the choices in your life, how someone can come and spit some kind of game to you and make you doubt every single thing that is your life, your relationship, your appearance, your job, your ambitions, your marriage, and how those thoughts can lead to choices and behavior that you never thought that you were capable of. — Jurnee Smollett

Several years after she obtained the patent for her game, and finding it difficult to support herself on the $10 a week she was earning as a stenographer, Magie staged an audacious stunt mocking marriage as the only option for women; it made national headlines. Purchasing an advertisement, she offered herself for sale as a "young woman American slave" to the highest bidder. Her ad said that she was "not beautiful, but very attractive," and that she had "features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine. — Anonymous

What if you kill a man who was plotting to shoot up a McDonald's? What if you commit one murder to prevent a dozen murders? The "obviously correct" judgment of the law starts to sound more and more like an opinion when a new variable is introduced, doesn't it? And okay, these "what if this?" exercises may feel like cerebral game play, but you don't even need to look to extreme examples to see the tenuous, opinion-based nature of laws. Abortion. Gay marriage. Determining fair use in a copyright infringement case. Every time a law is applied, it is applied as a matter of opinion. And those are the laws -- the biggest and baddest rules we have. — Johnny B. Truant

Marriage is not a game for the young. — Elizabeth Gilbert

She wanted to believe him so much, but fear held her in its grasp more firmly than ever before. And if she made the wrong decision, she would have to live with the result for the rest of her life. That could be a long time and she'd already made one wrong choice regarding marriage and love. What if she made another? She sat there remembering the way he'd been good to her children, the way he'd made love to her that first time, soothing her fears. She remembered how he'd finally begun to teach her the shipping business, the impromptu baseball game with Philip, the picnic in her office, the trip to his family home, and all the little things that made her laugh. From the very first he'd been kind to her, while lying repeatedly regarding the business. The business seemed to be his Achilles' heel and he'd just given it to her. — Sylvia McDaniel

Love'
Two perfectly happy people ready to gamble — Karan Patade

This mindset, known as loss aversion, the sunk-cost fallacy, and throwing good money after bad, is patently irrational, but it is surprisingly pervasive in human decision-making.65 People stay in an abusive marriage because of the years they have already put into it, or sit through a bad movie because they have already paid for the ticket, or try to reverse a gambling loss by doubling their next bet, or pour money into a boondoggle because they've already poured so much money into it. Though psychologists don't fully understand why people are suckers for sunk costs, a common explanation is that it signals a public commitment. The person is announcing: "When I make a decision, I'm not so weak, stupid, or indecisive that I can be easily talked out of it." In a contest of resolve like an attrition game, loss aversion could serve as a costly and hence credible signal that the contestant is not about to concede, preempting his opponent's strategy of outlasting him just one more round. — Steven Pinker

We are not going to decide this with a game of cards," Sebastian grout. "Besides, the decision has been made."
"Oh? Tristan arched a brow. "And who is it to be then?"
"You. You're the one who allowed her in here and then let her stay."
He'd expected his brother to protest. Instead, he simply gave up curt nod.
"Right, then. I'd best go ask for her hand while she still in London. Word is that her father sending her away."
He taken but two steps before Sebastian and ground out, "Damn you, Tristan. You know it will be me. — Lorraine Heath