Self Destructive Relationships Quotes & Sayings

So, whenever you find yourself putting forth great effort without success, you're trying to force something that won't fit under the circumstances. That's a destructive waste of time. And if that isn't enough to keep in mind, your techniques must always be allowed to evolve and change, in relationships, in life, in science, in society. Otherwise you stagnate, and you won't get anywhere in the long run ... You know what the philosopher Aldous Huxley said? He said 'Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. — Tony Vigorito

Sexual exploitation within professional relationships sometimes has been referred to as "professional incest." (...) the consequences to victims are remarkably similar to the effects observed in incest survivors. Women who are abused by someone whom they know and trust demonstrate distinct symptoms which usually are not present in victims of violence who did not know the offenders. They usually view their own participation as voluntary and therefore are likely to experience feelings of shame and guilt about having consented to the sexual conduct. They may feel anger at the perpetrator, but the anger is also turned inward to themselves, often leading to self-doubt and depression. As a result, they frequently demonstrate severely lowered self-esteem, social isolation, and sometimes self-destructive behavior, including suicide. — Joel Friedman

Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing. — Stefan Molyneux

The Bible's emphasis on right relationships is a challenge to our culture's destructive focus on the self — Guy Brandon

If there is no honesty, there is no relationship. The only degree to which there is a relationship is the degree to which you are honest. Expressing your clear desires does not make you a dictator and you telling what you think, feel, and what you want or don't want, is just called being honest. It doesn't control him at all.
You're trying to control others by withholding information by not getting involved and by not being honest. Withholding information is a form of manipulation. It is dishonest and it's destructive to a relationship. — Stefan Molyneux

It's like you're always living in your head. . . . Relax and appreciate your surroundings a little. — Brent Jones

Adopting the behaviors and habits of surrendered people helps us improve our relationships, feel love and gratitude, get healthier, give up destructive people and behavior patterns, and become more successful and influential in our lives and careers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as benefits go. — Judith Orloff

Forgiveness is a personal process that doesn't depend on us having direct contact with the people who have hurt us. — Sharon Salzberg

I've made four films about the destructive nature of relationships, of secrets and lies, and I think I'm no longer interested in that subject - which is a wonderful relief. — Ira Sachs

He pondered his turmoil, wondering which he feared most - losing his father or being alone in the world. Both were inevitable. Neither could be stopped or slowed down. All he could do now was brace for impact. — Brent Jones

One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party's demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children. The practice inhibited all forms of human contact, so that people no longer wanted to have friends. It also encouraged secretiveness and hypocrisy. To protect himself, a man had to keep his thoughts to himself. When he was compelled to speak, often lying was the only way to protect himself and his family. — Nien Cheng

I have to admit that many of the relationships I write about are destructive, but that's the yin to the yang of a good relationship. Maybe you have to experience the terrible ones to appreciate the good unions! — Caroline Leavitt

Don't repress your needs and feelings. They fester, becoming corrosive and destructive in your relationships. In a calm, loving way, tell the people in your life what you need. Don't expect people to read your mind. It only leads to disappointment and frustration. Empower them to empower you! — Jillian Michaels

Cheaters are cowards that are tempted to chase the fantasy of what could be ... instead of courageously addressing their own self-destructive behavior and cultivating what is. — Steve Maraboli

Amy [Winehouse] increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death. — Russell Brand

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

This imbalance causes resentments within the over-responsible and dependency with the irresponsible person and this dynamic becomes the destructive life-pattern not conducive to happy families. — David W. Earle

Older spouses may be more mature, but later marriage has its own challenges. Rather than growing together while their twentysomething selves are still forming, partners who marry older may be more set in their ways. And a series of low-commitment, possibly destructive relationships can create bad habits and erode faith in love. And even though searching may help you find a better partner, the pool of available singles shallows over time, perhaps in more ways than one. — Meg Jay

Divorce can be a very destructive force and high powered, professional career women, like myself, don't have the luxury of time to fall apart. We want an alternative to months in therapy - something which will hold us together whilst helping us heal around our busy schedules that will also enable us to build healthy, future relationships which are drama-free. — Adele Theron

I have family members who literally struggle with crack addiction, and I've seen how destructive that's been, not only for their relationships and their children and their career, but perpetually even until today because that meant that that person was not there all these years to raise their child and just the damage that it inflicts. — Rosario Dawson

Anger Works
Anger can be extremely rewarding in the short term. It can distract you from pain and threatening feelings. You may use anger to provoke fear and anxiety in others. Such anger makes others feel threatened, allowing you to gain control. But regularly directing anger at someone is likely to make him or her even less supportive. Ultimately, that person will withdraw completely- leaving you feeling even more isolated. — Bernard Golden

See, you've got to understand, son. There's two types of guys in this world. There's guys . . . who think they're in control, and guys like us who live in the moment. Who accept life as it is. — Brent Jones

Then the anger about blaming society for the situation in which we find ourselves - blaming, say, man for the situation in which woman finds herself. I don't believe in that because I believe very much our double responsibility, that we engage ourselves in destructive relationships, that we have a part of the responsibility, unconsciously. — Anais Nin

I lost someone close to me once . . . Taught me to live in the moment. Life is short, you know? — Brent Jones

Trying to impose our personal agenda on someone else's experience is the shadow side of love, while real love recognizes that life unfolds at its own pace. — Sharon Salzberg

If that's the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You've numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry. — Brent Jones

When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, 'Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.' But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Aggression is inherently destructive of relationships. People and ideologies are pitted against each other, believing that in order to survive, they must destroy the opposition. — Margaret J. Wheatley

However, what I do believe to genuinely sacred - and, indeed, more useful to the earth as a whole - is trying to ensure that there are as few unbalanced, destructive people as possible. By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world.
It's those unhappy, unwanted children, who then grew into angry adults, who have caused the great majority of humankind's miseries. They are the ones who make states feel feral; streets dangerous; relationships violent. — Caitlin Moran

It feels like I'm stuck in one spot. It's been this way for a long time. I know you understand, but now you're moving on without me. And I - I'm not ready to be alone. — Brent Jones

Many people, observing religious conflict in the contemporary world, have become hostile to religion as such and regard it as a source of violence and intolerance.5 In a world of overlapping and plural religious environments, this can clearly be the case. But they fail to put religion in its broader historical context, where it was a critical factor in permitting broad social cooperation that transcended kin and friends as a source of social relationships. Moreover, secular ideologies like Marxism-Leninism or nationalism that have displaced religious beliefs in many contemporary societies can be and have been no less destructive due to the passionate beliefs that they engender. — Francis Fukuyama

I [Lorna Craig] would say that teaching a girl that her salvation depends on her having sexual relations with a married man is inherently destructive." Such relationships, Craig argues bitterly, should be considered "a crime, not a religion. — Jon Krakauer

Happiness isn't something you work toward, the same way misery isn't something you work toward. — Brent Jones

If the entity allows [the relationships with individuals] to produce a hardening of the heart, or of a determination to get even, or of those conditions that hold for discontent, malice, or otherwise, these must surely bring the destructive forces that build that which the entity must meet; for, in truth, that builded in the mental forces of a body is as active in the experiences as must come to the entity as were done in the very material act ... — Edgar Cayce

It's like everyone has their own little recipe for happiness, but no one really seems all that happy. — Brent Jones

I gave up drinking before my twentieth birthday. I haven't touched the stuff since. And I've discovered that not everyone who does horrible things is a horrible person. — Brent Jones

I learned from the recklessness of my youthful relationships that unbridled passion is destructive and brings neither happiness nor satisfaction. On the contrary, it brings suffering to all concerned. I also learned that the feelings that lead to such relationships have nothing whatever to do with love. Selfishness is never love. — Joseph Pearce

Destructive behavior - or simply behavior that constantly annoys your spouse to the point of desperation - is not right, and there will always be a serious consequence for it in your marriage and personal life. But every attempt you make to rid yourself of that behavior and do what's right will bring reward.
Today, ask God to help break any bad habits that you or your spouse may have. — Stormie O'martian

Ultimately, too much dependency on a person can kill love. Relationships based on emotional insecurity and need, rather than on love, can become self-destructive. They don't work. Too much need drives people away and smothers love. It scares people away. — Melody Beattie

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being - someone who wants to be happy, just as we do. — Sharon Salzberg

Patients must be willing to give up their maladaptive coping styles in order to change. For example, patients who continue surrendering to the schema - by remaining in destructive relationships or by not setting limits in their personal or work lives -perpetuate the schema and are not able to make significant progress in therapy. — Jeffrey E. Young

I am here for readers to see parts of themselves during my dark days, but also for a better way of living in my triumphs and gained wisdom. — Theia Mey