Luanne Rice Quotes

Abusive relationships go on and on. You're in it for so long that it can almost be impossible to see it for what it is. That just becomes your life. We get used to and adapt.

I read 'Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,' and I found frightening pieces that related to... my own life.

I think for people who are inside these relationships that are really hard to leave, there is always a compelling reason to stay. It's not that they are wholly bad people.

There are endless new variations on how to hurt a woman physically, emotionally, financially, and socially.

Domestic abuse happens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships - in other words, in families - the last place we would want or expect to find violence.

My father was actually controlling and abusive.

People who are in abusive relationships often don't realise it, but it slowly seems to build until you're trapped.

A relationship can be deeply damaging without anyone leaving marks on you. So many people - especially young women - end up trying to maintain those emotionally abusive relationships because we don't think it's that bad and that we are really some of the lucky ones because we haven't experienced 'real' abuse.

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

I took all the blame. I admitted mistakes I hadn't made, intentions I'd never had. Whenever she turned cold and hard, I begged her to be good to me again, to forgive me and love me. Sometimes I had the feeling that she hurt herself when she turned cold and rigid. As if what she was yearning for was the warmth of my apologies, protestations, and entreaties. Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice.

I feel very sorry for people who are trapped in an abusive relationship and keep making excuses for their abuser.

When a man has been consistently battering his wife, he shouldn't expect a bouquet of roses from her the morning after he promises to stop.

My husband worked on Wall Street and was an Ivy League graduate as well. In our world, we were the last couple you'd imagine enmeshed in domestic violence.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.

Our culture encourages women to nurture men, making it predictable that many experience a seductive empathy for abusive men, as well as the misguided hope that love can obliterate an ugly past.

It was my first big relationship and it was just very abusive. I wouldn't give him the credit of naming him, if he ever reads this. But he was older, in the music business - or so he said.

Daddy loves you, but he smacks you, and he can shout at you and smash things, but Daddy still loves you. So when you get into a relationship with someone who does all of that, why would it be unusual?

What is harm for some women isn’t harm for another. Some women accept beatings and insults as a joke, while others do not.

Israel's behavior when it comes to Egypt is that of a battered wife. Nothing but apologies.

There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever.

One of the things that can be helpful in terms of an explanation is to look at the ways in which cults are similar to abusive relationships. Nobody seeks out an abusive partner, but so many people stay in these relationships longer than they should - they make excuses, they ignore red flags, and they allow themselves to be emotionally manipulated.

There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.

That's one part of oppression is to make sure you are a shameful, shamed human being. That takes care of the past.