Quotes & Sayings About Painful Relationships

I've spent so much time avoiding arguments and smoothing relationships with the people around me, this confrontation is painful. — Simone Elkeles

She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful. — Sarah Dunn

The rest of the short walk was silent. It was that loud sort
of silence where the absence is painful, when there's so much to
say, but nothing is said. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

To get here had been painful, but for once in my life I felt free. — Sarah Swainson

Self-discovery changes everything, including your relationships with people. When you find your authentic self, those who loved your mask are disappointed. you may end up alone, but you don't need to stay alone. While it's painful to sever old connections, it's not a tragedy. it's an opportunity. Now, you can find people who understand the importance of looking for truth and being authentic. Now you can find people who want to connect deeply, like you've always wanted to, instead of constant small talk and head games. Now you can have real intimacy. Now, you can find your tribe. — Vironika Tugaleva

How can HOW help us repair our faltering global economy?
Only by getting our "hows" right can we ensure that we are sustainable. This can only be achieved when we are rooted in, and inspired by, sustainable values. The global economic meltdown supplied a perfect, but painful, example of how sustainability cannot be guided by situational values. The economic crash occurred because too many financial companies became disconnected from fundamental values and long-term sustainable thinking. Instead of nurturing sustainable collaborations, banks, lenders, borrowers and shareholders pursued short-term relationships founded on situational values. More than ever we need to get out of this cycle of crises and build long-term success and deep human connections so that we achieve enduring significance in today's globally interconnected world. — Dov Seidman

Control doesn't validate love; it validates the nonexistence of trust and the painful unwillingness to accept the truth. — Shannon L. Alder

The path to solid, supportive, healthy relationships, self-respect, and a quality life starts with the usually painful decision to do the Right Thing. — Laura C. Schlessinger

Maybe I'd see how you could be so certain that we had no chance...at all. — Jason Robert Brown

Why do you speak like we won't meet again for such a long time?"
"Because we didn't, for such a long time, — Sapan Saxena

one of the most painful things in life is to be considered as meaningless in an environment where you think you are truly meaningful — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I cite too the ordinary fears of mortality the inspection of a fast-growing mole on the side of the nose blood in the stool a painful injury or the mournful witness of the slow death of a parent all this is given to all men as well as the starting awake in the nether hours of the night from such glutinous nightmare that on'e self name relationships nationality place in life all data of specificity wipe out amnesiatically asiatically you don't even know the idea human it is such a low hour of the night and he shares it with all of us. — E.L. Doctorow

Blame doesn't empower you. It keeps you stuck in a place you don't want to be because you don't want to make the temporary, but painful decision, to be responsible for the outcome of your own life's happiness. — Shannon L. Alder

[On what young husbands should say to their wives:] I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us ... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you. — John Chrysostom

Although it can hurt to experience painful relationships with others, it is through these struggles that we grow more rapidly. By reflecting on those relationships, we can observe our habits and motivations, both positive and negative. We can set clear goals about the kind of person we want to be and slowly work to change our habits, and our relationships as a result. In this process, we develop a virtuous character that acts harmoniously with others. — Ilchi Lee

But we Americans scrap relationships that are not working as we would like -- whether they be with relatives, with spouses, or with friends. We dispose of them like Kleenex. When it is inconvenient, painful, difficult, I get rid of you. I hit the road. — Stuart Miller

It's unexpectedly painful to have become a pronoun. — Robin Black

Some ADD adults adapt to the work world by allowing themselves to be pitifully underemployed. Rather than find a great match for their skills and interests, they will work at a job far below their natural abilities. In this way, their inevitable screwups and difficulties with following directions will be balanced by being more capable than those they work with. This strategy has its own set of painful problems. For one thing, knowing you could do and be more can lead to an enduring agony. For another, you may find yourself falling prey to negative feedback from people who aren't as smart as you are. Another strategy ADD adults sometimes adopt is to overcompensate, working inhuman hours to try to avoid possible criticism. It can be shattering when even this strategy doesn't prevent criticism from heading your way, whether from colleagues, bosses, or clients. Another problem with this strategy is that it can take a tremendous toll on your personal relationships. — Lara Honos-Webb

Sometimes you think you're helping someone up, but they're actually pulling you down. This is the painful dynamic of dealing with someone who is incurably selfish. — Steve Maraboli

The time has also come to recognize the painful truth that traditional Judeo-Christian moral values of pain and pleasure in human relationships have contributed substantially to child abuse and to the prevalence of physical violence in Western civilization ... The religious system upon which our culture is based holds that pain, suffering and deprivation are moral and necessary to save one's soul and make one a 'good person.' The crucifixion and scourging of Christ are examples. — James W. Prescott

Being close but feeling far, talking but not being heard, loving but not being loved, that is the painful reality of a dying relationship. — Steve Maraboli

Getting habitual to her so much that you can't think anything else but her all the time and one day she leaves. It is suddenly an existence crisis. It is painful. Everything feels worthless and the only thing that can save your mental state is some more moments with her. But you can't get them. And the cycle of pain continues to grow bigger and so the love — Ameya Agrawal

Father-daughter incest is not only the type of incest most frequently reported but also represents a paradigm of female sexual victimization. The relationship between father and daughter, adult male and female child, is one of the most unequal relationships imaginable. It is no accident that incest occurs most often precisely in the relationship where the female is most powerless. The actual sexual encounter may be brutal or tender, painful or pleasurable; but it is always, inevitably, destructive to the child. The father, in effect, forces the daughter to pay with her body for affection and care which should be freely given. p4 — Judith Lewis Herman

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful — Monica Ali

Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars? — Jodi Picoult

She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing. — Sarah Dunn

He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. — Hermann Hesse

Relationships are messy and painful, and hard to maintain. It takes time build, but only seconds to destroy. — Alexis Tiger

Our hearts break, and take us out of relationships that are too painful for us — John Geddes

The UK office for National Statistics has identified the things that matter most for happiness as "health, relationships, work, and the environment" - a list that tallies closely with our basic goods. Given that our lives have not noticeably improved in these respects since 1974 it is hardly surprising that we do not feel any happier.
Are we then suggesting a return to living standards of 1974? Not necessarily, for the luxuries acquired since then may, even if they have added nothing to our real well-being, be painful to forgo. This is an instance of the general truth that damaging social changes cannot always be rectified simply by being reversed, any more than a man flattened by a steamroller can be restored to life by being run over backwards. What we are saying is that the long-term goal of economic policy should henceforth not be growth, but the restructuring of our collective existence so as to facilitate the good life. — Robert Skidelsky

She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now
people love different people in different ways
but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look strong, or just come on strong, people react to you in another way, and, since you don't see what they see, this can be very painful. I think that's why Sis was always in front of that damn mirror all the time, when we were kids. She was saying, 'I don't care. I got me.' Of course, this only made her come on stronger than ever, which was the last effect she desired: but that's the way we are and that's how we can sometimes get so fucked up. Anyway, she's past all that. She knows who she is, or, at least, she knows who she damn well isn't. — James Baldwin

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life. — Larry Ellison

Illness can be undignified. Suffering does not have a purpose, and relationships are complicated. In the most painful way a person can, Hazel comes to realize, that love does not, cannot, conquer death. What it can do, however, is transcend it. — Chelsey Philpot

The negative energies when sent out in the universe will reap an equivalent or more of that. It can come back as health problems, an accident, material loss or painful relationships. — Hina Hashmi

As you experience love and relationships, you start to realize that love tends to end in a very painful goodbye. — Taylor Swift

There comes a time in some relationships when no matter how sincere the attempt to reconcile the differences or how strong the wish to recreate a part of the past once shared, the struggle becomes so painful that nothing else is felt and the world and all its beauty only add to the discomfort by providing cruel contrast. — Leo Buscaglia

I've been in a lot of fiery relationships, and it is so exciting. But there's a more profound feeling when the love is just real and not so painful. — Ali Larter

I maybe such a pain in the ass,
But in a good way.
I give you pleasure at the same time! — Arzum Uzun

All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.
Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when we ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Concrete, Steel & Paint portrays the core values of restorative justice-respect, responsibility and relationships-expressed through art. it is art that involves victims, offenders and communities in a dialogue that is sometimes difficult and painful, sometimes reconciling, but always engaging. As one prisoner says in the film, 'We have come together collectively through art.' It will be a great discussion tool for college classes, community groups and others interested in issues of justice, community-building, conflict resolution and socially-engaged art. — Howard Zehr

A relationship between two people is made up, for the most part, of invisible things: memories, shared experiences, hopes and fears. When one person disappears, the other is left alone, as if holding a string with no kite. Memories can do a lot to sustain you, but the invisible stuff of the relationship is lost, even as unresolved issues remain: arguments never settled, kind words never uttered, things left un-said. They become like a splinter beneath the skin-unseen, but painful nevertheless. Until they're exposed, coping with the loss is impossible. — David Dosa

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.
Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for God. And every good thing we experience is meant to be a metaphor of what we can only find in Him ... We settle for the satisfaction of human relationships when they were meant to point us to the perfect relational satisfaction found only with God. — Paul David Tripp

Being honest in a relationship is at times exceedingly difficult and painful. Yet the moment a person evades the truth, central fibers of the self pull away and the person initiates a process of deception - a way of manipulating the other person by preventing the person from discovering real thoughts and real feelings — Clark Mustakas

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay ... , from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men ... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77) — Sigmund Freud

Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy
nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships.
It is actually the ability to use energy data
to make decisions in the immediate moment. — Caroline Myss

A commonality among factitious disorder is a lack in bonding personal relationships, providing alternative supports. Mr. McIlroy a skilled patient would receive over 200 hospital admissions in Britain subjecting himself to hundreds of painful treatments and procedures (Pallis & Bamji, 1979). The strength of compulsion of being viewed in the patient role becomes ever more obvious through the individual's willingness to submit to such rigors. Munchausen's syndrome may be rare yet continues to be a consistent disorder at the same time. The characteristics of Munchausen syndrome include physiological complaints presented by a dramatic patient. The patient exaggerates the illness exhibiting Pseudologia Fantastica. To minimize communication a patient will make use of hospital networks within different geographical locations. — Steven G. Carley

Sometimes the most painful lessons are delivered by someone masquerading as a soul mate. — Steve Maraboli

Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement. — Adrienne Rich

Suffer you will, one way or another — Nilesh Rathod

I have frantically played the clown in order to distangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. — Osamu Dazai

Moods are by nature compelling, contagious, and profoundly interpersonal, and disorders of mood alter the perceptions and behaviors not only of those who have them but also of those who are related or closely associated. Manic-depressive illness - marked as it is by extraordinary and confusing fluctuations in mood, personality, thinking, and behavior - inevitably has powerful and often painful effects on relationships. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. — Ernest Hemingway,

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

Accepting our greatness means no longer playing small. It often starts with baby steps. But eventually it means making major changes - in our lives, jobs, relationships, and dreams.

If I had believed in my own self-worth, I would never have been willing to make the financial moves I made in the past.

If I'd known my value, I couldn't have spent so many years ignoring the whispering - and sometimes screaming - voice that told me to leave my marriage. For a long time, that truth was just too scary and painful for me to face. Talk about keeping my head in the sand!

But how many years did I waste, postponing what has proven to be a much better life - simply because I went into hiding and didn't see that I was worthy of something better? — Nancy Levin

Nas looked at Vik from across the room, and when he felt her eyes on him and lifted his head, she lowered her glance. It wasn't the first time in the past two weeks that I saw them do this. It also didn't escape Lev's notice that Viktor had stopped coming around. They hadn't spoke in that time.
Something had happened between them, and Nas was not opening up, probably because it was still too painful to talk about.
All I knew was that Nas was miserable and Vik had developed the temper of a T-Rex with itchy balls.
Relationships were collapsing around us, but Lev and I were going stronger than ever. — Belle Aurora

Rachel shook her head, as if casting out the memories from her mind. Something he'd been unable to do in one hundred and ninety-eight years. Memories, painful and stark, failed to retreat, instead they clung to him like a Rottweiler to a bone. — D.A. Rhine

Life has two choices: create or destruct. These choices are the backbone for all, within oneself and outside oneself. Too many ways of thinking are described by too many people that have no idea. If you're attached to your ways then detach, so you can change. Use this detachment in your writing, relationships, and understanding of life. Our future as individuals, as nations, and as mankind can only go one way. It's our choice whether we want the painful path or the peaceful path. — Mark Donnelly

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts ... good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don't hurt. They're not painful. That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it's with the friends that you choose. It's with the people you surround yourselves with. — Michelle Obama

There's people who think what they need and what they deserve in their lives is a lot worse than what they actually do, so they get themselves involved in things that are needlessly painful: brutal relationships, abusive relationships. — Adam Duritz

The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can't change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we're dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society's culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life. — L.M. Browning

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't. — Jeanette Winterson

It seems to me that one of the great hazards is quick love, which is actually charm. We get used to smiling, hugging, bantering, practicing good eye contact. And it's easier then true, slow, awkward and painful connection with someone who sees all the worst parts of you. Your act is easy. Being with you, deeply with, is difficult. — Shauna Niequist

Sometimes the things that went on between two people were so private and so painful the the rest of the world needed to reserve judgement. — Amy Lane

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls
woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Relationships are painful when they are not working and so joyful when they are. — Pamela Cummins

Reflection can be painful, but reflection can also be productive. — Charlotte Pearson

That's why it is so dangerous to use infatuation as a sign to pursue a relationship. If you and I don't know the difference between infatuation and love, we are destined to make some of the dumbest and most regrettable decisions we'll ever make. These bad decisions come with heavy and painful price tags. So you see, it's imperative in this tricky business of "falling in love" that we take the time to clearly define what we mean by the word "love." The investment will pay off handsomely. We can actually learn how to avoid future relational baggage and how to recognize authentic love relationships when we clarify two crucial issues: (1) what love is, and (2) what the difference is between love and infatuation. — Chip Ingram