Why do people persist in a dissatisfying relationship, unwilling either to work toward solutions or end it and move on? It's because they know changing will lead to the unknown, and most people believe that the unknown will be much more painful than what they're already experiencing.
The trouble with anyone when they're unhappy or in a relationship they recognize is not working but don't know what to do about is that they can't see farther out than that. If the relationship is not working, if what was there isn't there anymore, you have to do something about it.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
These days... it's all vanilla sex for me.
When you've been in a relationship for a long time, the physical side of things can be very unspontaneous.
There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It's not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.
It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.
That her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out
I think a lot of people are in relationships because they've been in them for a long time and they don't know how to end them.
For a long time visits among lovers and professions of love are kept up through habit, after their behavior has plainly proved that love no longer exists.
In general, the problem in a relationship is when the couple stagnate.
Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together physically. It comes from being apart mentally and spiritually.
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.
My marriage didn't make me sad, but it didn't make me happy either. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn't because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom.
Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?
I told you once that [our marriage] was like an adolescent's dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn't changed.
In the same way you pick idly at chips, promising this is literally your last one, you may be in a relationship that you know isn't going anywhere, but you're hungry for love, and it feels less frightening than nothing.
A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?
Milk which is just about to turn is akin to that moment spent on the cusp of failure in a dulled and fettered relationship.
I think what's dangerous about marriage is the way it can make you feel like you've got it all wrapped up. Like you're done: you've found your spouse, you've married him or her, and you don't need to think too much more about it.
There are many things that can keep you in a relationship," I say. "Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that's okay, because you don't know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won't change.
Why does anyone stay in an unhappy relationship? Because people do. They do it all the time. And the truth is, when you're in it, when you're up to your neck in the everyday part of life with another human being, sometimes you don't exactly notice how bad things really are.
You have not looked at the poor woman for years, for the simple reason that marriage makes things so certain. Marriage makes things so dead and dull. Marriage takes all surprise and wonder away. Marriage makes you take your wife for granted, your husband for granted. What is the need to look at your wife? She will be there tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and forever. You look at people when you know you may not be able to look at them again. Marriage kills; it makes something tremendously beautiful very ugly.
I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long, like a worn-out recording of a favorite song.
Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.
