When you meet a lot of people and you date somebody, or you're just in a relationship with friends, lovers, business, or whatever it may be, there are people that are just toxic to you, and you don't even know it yourself.
When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.
Mum's serial misbehavior over the years had driven me, despairing, to write her scolding - occasionally scalding letters.
The trouble is that, while my parents were great when they were apart, they were terrible together.
Everybody's been in harsh relationships.
I used to watch 'The Waltons' and sob because my family was nothing like that. We had a cruel sense of humor in my family.
You can't have a conversation with someone who's intimidated by you all the time.
While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn.
Lis and I didn't talk for a year. I was in a relationship that wasn't good for me. I became isolated. I had nobody anymore, I only had my relationship.
With my first two husbands, I always kinda sensed they thought there was something wrong with me. Maybe I was too flighty or whatever.
The lack of exposure to right perspective has caused me to be in abusive relationships. When a boy stubbed cigarette on my leg, I thought it was out of love. You know why? Because our films taught us slapping in the face was a way of expressing love.
I really hate drama. It's draining; it's mentally draining. It's a waste of time.
Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it's in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it's in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.
Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.
Often, when cheating happens, we rush to place blame solely on one person - either the person who did the cheating, or more insidiously, if it happened to us, we blame ourselves for not being 'good enough' to keep them around. But putting it all on one person doesn't paint the entire picture.
Friends have warned me that I can be a bully in the kitchen. With every fledgling relationship, I'm anxiously aware that the simple act of cooking alongside my new paramour can unleash havoc.
One fool at least in every married couple.
All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger. It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves. Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.
It's really annoying when you're trying to get to know someone and she doesn't pay attention to you because she's obsessed with her phone.
If you are in a toxic relationship, that poisons you everywhere else in your life.
She encouraged any artistic impulse I had, and my father discouraged any artistic impulse I had. They took out their problems with each other on me and my sister.
I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isn't happening.
I had a relationship where we found out each other's Facebook passwords and would check each other's messages. That's not healthy.
If two people have only one thought between them, something is very wrong.
My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies.
