Threatening Relationship Quotes & Sayings

Assertiveness is very difficult for a person with co-dependent tendencies. Conflict is very threatening and it could mean the loss of feeling accepted. To avoid risking rejection, the co-dependent is willing to give up his/her rights, allow boundaries to be crossed, or even suffer abuse at the hands of another - all for the sake of maintaining the "relationship." This works out very nicely for the N, who cannot tolerate being confronted by another, and who demands maintaining a position of superiority in the relationship. — Cynthia Zayn

If someone yells at me, they are not expressing love. They may be threatening me. They may be expressing great frustration with me. They may simply be trying to control my behavior. However, they are not communicating love. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women, you're supposed to make conversation?" she added; her half smile was perhaps meant to be ironic, though to Amedeo, who at that moment would have paid anything rather than give up his novel, it seemed downright threatening. — Italo Calvino

And don't you ever do anything like that again! I am the one who ends up in the stupid life-threatening situations. You are the levelheaded, responsible one in this relationship. Got it? This is how this whole thing works. We have to stick to our designated roles, or there is chaos! — Molly Harper

Lilli . . . Lilli . . . Lilli."

Sweet Jesus, she was going to kill him. She'd just gotten to sleep. Now he was running a finger up and down her spine, saying her name in an extremely life-threatening singsong voice. — Susan Fanetti

Armaments do not, generally speaking, cause wars. This notion, the logical crux of all arguments in favor of disarmament, turns the causal relationship upside down. Actually, it is wars, or conflicts threatening war, that cause armaments, not the reverse. — James Burnham

Polyamory can feel threatening because it upsets our fairy-tale assumption that the right partner will keep us safe from change. Polyamory introduces the prospect of chaos and uncertainty into what's supposed to be a straightforward progression to bliss. But a healthy relationship must first of all be resilient, able to respond to the changes and complexity life brings. Nor is happiness actually a state of being. It is a process, a side effect of doing other things. The fairy tale tells us that with the right partner, happiness just happens. But happiness is something we re-create every day. And it comes more from our outlook than from the things around us. — Franklin Veaux

Life has ceased to be lived in a closed world the center of which was man; the world has become limitless and the same time threatening. By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life. He is threatened by powerful superpersonal forces, capital and the market. His relationship to his fellow men, with everyone a potential competitor, has become hostile and estranged; he is free - that is, he is alone, isolated, threatened from all sides. [H]e is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness. Paradise is lost for good, the individual stands alone and faces the world - a stranger thrown into a limitless and threatening world. The new freedom is bound to create a deep feeling of insecurity, powerlessness, doubt, aloneness, and anxiety. — Erich Fromm

Practicing law in a general practice litigation firm can quickly sap an attorney's enthusiasm for life as well as their inner will to pursue their line of trade that they invested years of schooling qualifying to perform. In phone calls, an attorney listens to clients scream, cry, and curse, make wild accusations, and threatening to harm other people. Because the client is paying the firm, they feel entitled to act obscenely. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I can't find the compulsory mutilation of the genitals of children a subject for humor ... It's designed to repress sexual pleasure ... The full excision, not just the snip but the full mandatory covenant is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship. And can be, in itself life-threatening at that moment. We have records, I can show them to you, of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the United States of boy babies who died or had life-threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice. — Christopher Hitchens

Harshness, gruffness, and sternness are not effective in shaping a child's will. Likewise, constant whacking and threatening and criticizing are destructive and counterproductive. A parent who is mean and angry most of the time is creating resentment that will be stored and come roaring into the relationship during adolescence or beyond. Therefore, every opportunity should be taken to keep the tenor of the home pleasant, fun, and accepting. At the same time, however, parents should display confident firmness in their demeanor. You, Mom and Dad, are the boss. You are in charge. If you believe it, the tougher child will accept it also. — James C. Dobson

Along the way, they didn't say much, but their relationship has reached that stage where silence is comfortable, not threatening. Silence only harms when there are things that aren't being said, or when there's the fear that the well is empty and there's nothing left to say. Neither is the case here. They still have plenty to say to each other, just not anything right now. — David Levithan

On all levels, evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking down or are not working anymore. On a personal level, this often means the experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of security. — Eckhart Tolle

The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. At the same time, it can reveal our hardness of heart and are fears. Their cry is so demanding, and we are frequently seduced by wealth, power and the values of our societies. We want to climb the ladder of human promotion; we want to be recognized for our efficiency, power and virtue. The cry of the poor is threatening to the rich person within us.
We are sometimes prepared to give money and a little time, but we are frightened to give our hearts, to enter into a personal relationship of love and communion with them. For if we do so, we shall have to die to all our selfishness and to all the hardness of our heart. — Jean Vanier

What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the "quiet enjoyment" of one's private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property "owner" faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and "go to auction" at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as "fascism." — Vin Suprynowicz

But a Kate could never give Luke what I give him, and that's the edge. Rusted and bacteria ridden, I'm the blade that nicks at the perfectly hemmed seams of Luke's star quarterback life, threatening to shred it apart. And he likes that threat, the possibility of my danger. But he doesn't really want to see what I can do, the ragged holes I can open. I've spent most of our relationship scratching the surface, experimenting with the pressure, how much is too much before I draw blood? I'm getting tired. — Jessica Knoll

When there is no connection at all between people, then anger is a way of bringing them closer together, of making contact. But when there is a great deal of connectedness that is problematic or threatening or unacknowledged, then anger is a way of keeping people separate, of putting distance between us. — Audre Lorde