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The less you demand of something, the less it gives back, the weaker it becomes, until one day it’s a shadow of itself.
It took me a long time—and lots of therapy hours—to accept that my anxiety makes life harder, but it doesn’t make me wrong or damaged or…well, anything bad. It just…is. And sometimes it’s quiet and sometimes it’s loud, and no matter what, I’ve learned to cope. I’m tough. I push through a lot. And some days, I spend a lot of time wishing there was some silver bullet that would make anxiety vanish from my life for good.
“In the words of the inimitable Lisa Kleypas, ‘Marriage isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning. And it demands the effort of both partners to make a success of it.’”
“This idea that you’re all on your own, that your financial success or failure equates to your success or failure as a man. It’s seriously damaging, and it’s the lie that an oppressive capitalist patriarchal society wants us to live enslaved to.”
“If we aren’t honest with ourselves, we can’t be honest with our partners.
“About that word, fair…the idea of ‘fair’ in a marriage, any relationship, I mean it’s impossible. No marriage is fair. It’s complementary. The idea of ‘fair’ is absurd at best, ableist at worst.”
“Ableist,” Dr. Dietrich says. “Because saying a relationship has to be ‘fair’ implies only a certain balance and distribution of skills and aptitudes is valid. It upholds an arbitrary, damaging idea of ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ as requisite for fulfilling partnership. When in reality, all you need is two people who love what the other brings and share the work of love and life together.”
“But it’s like a drug, avoidance. And each day that goes without tension or worry or disappointment, lulls you with the promise of peace and ease.
Tragedy is built—it has a structure. And if that’s not the ending you want, then you get out of that trajectory. You change the narrative.”
I know more than anyone that having a low-income job is no indication of a person’s intellect or wisdom.
Staring at him, I recognize that familiarity dulls the shine of your partner’s mystery, but it doesn’t make them any less of a puzzle.
“Romance is about the centrality of loving relationships, and it reminds us that human connection is vital to existence, rather than glorifying egoism or violence or greed. So excuse my genre for not being perfect, but let’s back the fuck up from hypocritically critiquing books that have done a lot more for humanity than slashers and circle-jerk, five-hundred-page, nihilistic tomes.”
Aiden exhales slowly, steadying himself. “I’m sorry I mauled your face. It was half CPR, half Oh, thank fuck, you’re alive.”
They want apologies to wipe away the pain. But pain takes time to heal. You can forgive and hurt as you recover from the wound.
I turn and face them. “I’m not your brother. Don’t you want to do this stuff, you know…without me?” They all fold their arms across their chests and tip their heads the same direction. It’s beyond weird. And also…shit, it’s kind of endearing. “So that right there,” Oliver says, “is exactly why we need today.” Viggo pins me with his sharp stare. “Somewhere along the way, you forgot the day you became Freya’s, you became ours, too.” Ah, man. My eyes blur with tears. I stare down at my feet and blink them away as I clear my throat.
“You’re in this for good,” Ax tells me. “You don’t get to act like you’re somehow outside this merry-fucking-go-round that is being a Bergman. If I have to deal with this madness, so do you.”
yes, pain can have a purpose.”
“Long and hard.” Oliver smirks. “And thick. Heh. That’s the perk of a romance novel, all right.” Ren coughs as his cheeks pink. Ryder snorts. “Wait, what?” I ask. “What are you talking about?” Ax sighs. “Book boners, dude.” “Book what?”
“These men,” Frankie mutters around her straw. “Making us fall in love with them. Ruining our grand plans for spinsterhood. Troublemakers.” It makes me laugh.
I know, in some corner of my mind, that I numbed my feelings when I numbed my pain. Because you can’t pick which emotions you feel—you’re in touch with them and you experience them or you’re not and you don’t. And I chose numbness to survive the pain of my marriage.
Because that’s what trust is—a free fall of belief that your faith is not misplaced, that the rope you’re relying on will catch you, and the precipitous drop won’t crush you but instead end in a rush of relief, a stronger capacity to be brave and fearless.
He’s shown me strength lies in how openly you bare your heart, not how deeply you guard it. I just never thought that I could do it, that I was capable of such vulnerability.
“And two, we can choose how to live—miserable about what we’ve lost or grateful for what we still have.
“But they shouldn’t hide that pain.” “Easy for you to say,” she mutters. “It’s hard to be brave and say you’re not okay when you grow up struggling to explain your feelings, when it feels like mental health issues are a shameful thing to own up to.”
it’s easy to tell someone they should be open about when they’re hurting, but it’s hard to do that when your pain feels shameful, or…daunting.
“Freya, I saw it. They were so perfect for each other. And the thought that a few communication barriers and crappy attitudes could keep them from ever realizing that…” I sigh, feeling the real weight of my words. “I couldn’t take the thought of them missing the love of their lifetime. Because I have that. And I can’t imagine a world without her.”
“Because it’s about waiting for the one you love for a long time, after they’ve hurt you and you’ve hurt them. It’s about deciding the outside world doesn’t get to dictate your happiness, about forgiveness and second chances and love that grows with people as they grow, too.”
“You or me,” I mutter. “Easy choice.”
“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever—”
“‘I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.’”
Love’s true test, the measure of its strength, is its bravery to be honest, its willingness to face the hardest moments and say, Even though there’s nothing to be done, at least I have you.
I close my eyes, clumsily shutting off the light and setting it on the nightstand. I stare up at the ceiling, stunned. This is… Madness. Really fucking magical madness. Holy shit, I’m reading romance forever.
“I’m saying ‘happily ever after’ doesn’t exist. Not because lifelong love is impossible, but because, as we’ve learned, no couple can live ‘happily ever after.’ People whose love lasts, whose love grows and endures, choose each other in the unhappily ever after, the dark moments, not just the dazzling ones.
“‘This dark is everywhere’ we said, and called it light” — Orpheus and Eurydice, Jean Valentine
Ax swallows roughly as his fingertips brush hers. “I think…I have a new appreciation for charades.”
