But You Seemed So Happy Quotes

“He is not curious about my work, I am not curious about his. I’m general, we stopped asking each other how we were, what we thought, and what we wanted a long time ago. We stopped being curious about each other, period. You cannot spend your life with someone without curiosity. It is as devastating as infidelity, yet somehow working in a slower, gentler, more insidious way. It is being unfaithful to your own life”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits – A Tender and Funny Gen X Memoir on Divorce and Love

“I have come to this understanding: none of us will ever truly know the people we think we know so well. Our best friends. Our siblings. Our parents. Our partners. People are fundamentally unknowable. Even our children, people we have made. When all is said and done, we tell ourselves a story about who we think we are. We tell ourselves a story about who we think other people are. Their flaws, their motivations, their innermost thoughts and desires. We prefer our versions. We understand our versions. But all that aside, what we have in common is this: please see me, please care about me.”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits – A Tender and Funny Gen X Memoir on Divorce and Love

“I am so tired of wanting to want to make it work.”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

“want to be alone. + But what if I’m alone forever? - But I just said that’s what I wanted? I can’t imagine doing this again, this whole relationship thing, this whole marriage thing. But isn’t that exactly the type of sentiment the Vows section of the New York Times is littered with? - I don’t think I care about being alone forever. + But the devil you know, et cetera and so forth.”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

“+ We are good partners in just about every way that doesn’t include marriage,”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

“I am free from a yearslong conversation about how happy is happy enough? I have continuously asked myself how I could possibly be so selfish as to prioritize my own happiness. Isn’t it incredible what marriage and motherhood will do to your most basic sense of what you deserve?”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

“Sometimes you get so used to things being hard or just not working out that you don’t know what to do with yourself when they’re easy. But, just in case, there will be a random acquaintance or coworker or member of your own family around to tell you how lucky you are. Just in case you thought you deserved happiness and joy and the love of a good person. Just so you can, for the rest of your life, have this small yet nagging sense that maybe you didn’t deserve them. Or him. Or anything. That it was all just big dumb random luck.”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits – A Tender and Funny Gen X Memoir on Divorce and Love

“He is kind. He is a good man. These two realities kept us married twice as long as they should have. Because the message I’ve internalized since the beginning of our relationship is that I am a bitch and he is a gem. I am lucky. I am the only one who is lucky here. I will clearly never get this lucky again. I already have more than I deserve.”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits – A Tender and Funny Gen X Memoir on Divorce and Love

“He is not curious about my work, I am not curious about his. In general, we stopped asking each other how we were, what we thought, and what we wanted a long time ago. We stopped being curious about each other, period. You cannot spend your life with someone without curiosity. It is as devastating as infidelity, yet somehow working in a slower, gentler, more insidious way. It is being unfaithful to your own life”
― Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits – A Tender and Funny Gen X Memoir on Divorce and Love