Attachment Quotes

“Did his behaviour indicate a red flag?
Massively.
Did I notice it?
Probably.
Did I deliberately choose to ignore it because he was just.so.different?
Absolutely.
Did I feel ashamed for not knowing better, despite knowing better?
Constantly.”
― Aura Biru, We Are Everyone

“You're afraid the sly little things will steal your heart if they find out you have one.”
― Natalie Savage Carlson, The Family Under the Bridge

“And sometimes we hold on with both hands to things we really want to release.

This is a hard thing to admit. How do we know what to keep, and what is just an old idea we had about ourselves?”
― Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

“Looking back, it seems that was how Jude always was with me: keeping his distance, never asking for anything I might not want to give. That steadiness that I took to be a strength--his consistency--I realize now was a kind of boundary, a way of drawing a line in the sand. Like a sprinkling of salt at the threshold, it was a kind of spell to keep himself safe, unchanged. What he needed more than anything was to believe he needed nothing, that if I should ever leave, he'd remain the same man. But I had his key in my coat pocket and I was happy then, because it seemed like he was letting me in.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“The way he looked at me sometimes, on waking: as if I were a surprise, a gift, my appearance in his life miraculous. He called me Love, as if it were my name. As if I could be the very thing itself.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Do you love me? Do you love me? I asked, shaking him awake in the dark.

His rotation of answers:
You know I do.
Don't make me say it all the time or it will lose its meaning.
If I didn't, would I still be here, in bed with you?

I needed to hear it, the reassurance of those words. Repeating it to him over and over that winter, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou, like a prayer. Sometimes I would keep myself awake after Jude had fallen asleep to look at his face, missing him even in sleep. So sure, in these moments, that if he ever tried to leave me, I wouldn't let him. Undignified, the scene I'd make. Not too proud to beg.

I wanted us to be like rocks or anchors, keeping each other in place. Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Sometimes, however, unmet attachment needs have a positive impact on future relationships, if those later friendships are experienced as second chances. Eager to love and be loved, eager to meet those basic needs for caring and affiliation, children can make up for those unmet needs by being outgoing, having strong leadership qualities, and becoming devoted friends. So insecurely attached children are not doomed to a life of desperation, withdrawal, clinging, aggression, or insecurity, but they may need some additional help negotiating the complex terrain of the social world. The deeper a child’s unmet need, the harder it may be to ever have it filled later on. Expecting rejection, neglect, or smothering, the child may respond to peers with passivity, withdrawal, or aggression. Children who are afraid to assert their own needs may follow along with whatever the friend or the group says.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“I could drown in a sea of applause, but without you, it’d still just be drowning.”
― Nick Oliveri, The Conjurer

“No matter what they say, detachment is not always a solution, and attachment is a problem in our interconnected world.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“In my adulthood I will come to realize I was pinballing between the outer, public fake me; the under-my-roof, family fake me; and the real me, who desperately wanted to feel safe.”
― Moon Unit Zappa, Earth to Moon: A Memoir

“Stooping to kiss below my ear, pulling me close from behind. Running his hands over my body, soft in a black sweater, holding my breasts, slipping his fingers into my tights. How quickly his moods changed, pivoting like someone turning sharply on a boot heel. Vague thought before I closed my eyes, leaned into his hands--how many other women had he reached toward as a distraction?”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I think now that Jude kept me waiting that night to prove to me, and to himself, that he could. You want a dog, not a man, he said to me on another occasion, when I was angry at him for coming home late or not answering his phone. Someone to come whenever you whistle, whenever you call. He wanted to feel free, and to Jude that meant belonging to no one. Maybe he liked women who played along with those kinds of games, pushing him away only to pull him back again. To behave badly and be reprimanded in order to be forgiven--somewhere along the course of his life, Jude had learned this as a kind of love. And while I was slow to trust, to let people in, I loved without reservation once I did, and in this way I was stronger than him.

Although I did not feel strong then, when out of relief, rage, frustration, I began to cry.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Jude turned to me with a look I didn't recognize.

Can we keep him? he said.

I remember he said it that way--we. For so long I'd felt like a beggar for his love, and now, for the first time, he was asking something of me. To share with him something that would be ours together.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I knew what it was like to love like that--to want everyone you love to be within sight, within reach.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Though later I'd decide this was noncommittal, evasive, at the time it struck me as generous, a swelling in my chest, another unfamiliar feeling -- assurance, or security, or trust. we were in this together, we'd figure it out, and that made our love seem durable.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“In all our time together, I never once saw him cry. Saw his pale go pale, ashen, eyes redden but never brim. His heart was a dry country. In those moments I'd sat beside him and hooked my fingers through his, stroked his arm, while he stared straight ahead, unblinking. As if he were afraid of all the water that might spill over from within.

I want you to be happy, he said.

How dare he want what was best for me, I thought. How dare he think he always knew exactly what that was.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“All his rules for butterflies and birds. He treated me like a light thing. Loving things loosely and then letting them go.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I am tired Richard, I am tired of getting attached to these people, and after leaving I get an invitation to a funeral, I am tired of looking into broken souls and all the sad stories, it all weighs heavy in my heart, after thirty years of this one starts to ask the question Who am I?”
― Kenan Hudaverdi, Nazar: “Self-Fulling Prophecy Realized”

“Isobel: Will you still be a surrogate, Cian?

Oscar: Fucking hell.

Moses: See? It’s already starting.

Cian: Of course, doll. But it can’t always be me. You might form an attachment to me.

Isobel: No danger of that.

Cian: Wow.”
― Jane Washington, Tourner

“External dependency creates internal bondage.”
― Vinaya

“When entering a new relationship, set solid boundary lines and do not allow yourself to leap over them.”
― Asa Don Brown

“If personal identity resides in the telling, then so does social identity. Families, nations, religions (but also corporations, universities, departments of sociology) know who they are by the stories they tell. The modern discipline of history is closely related to the emergence of the nation-state.”
― Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

“Our minds are like bustling train stations. Thoughts constantly arrive and depart, some fleeting whispers, others insistent shouts. But just like a passerby isn't rattled by every announcement, we needn't be swayed by every thought. It's the latching on, the belief that a random thought holds absolute truth, that burdens us. True suffering stems from clinging to these mental trains, mistaking them for our final destination.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“But she was in love, head over heels in love the way you are at age six, without knowing that this love would be as fleeting as it was
powerful, and as powerful as it was secret, and misunderstood, an attachment, an obsession that Oceane had never called, nor would ever call `love'.”
― Grégoire Courtois, The Laws of the Skies

“In healthy relating, we connect but do not attach. We can only really possess what does not possess us. This leads us to the great irony of addictive relating: We attach and thereby do not have. The second irony is that the more we rely on someone for security, the less secure we feel. It is sometimes frightening to realize how much impact a partner has come to have on our life and thoughts. We may react in counter-phobic ways like getting even closer!”
― David Richo, 亲密关系的重建

“To love without wanting to possess or influence.”
― Jude Watson, Secret Weapon

“In the land of my girlhood, there were many kites. There was one for each of us. We flew them to our heart’s delight. We flew them till they bound our feet, till they bound our hearts with kite strings. The kites are forever tethered to our hearts though we can no longer see them. Wherever we go, they remain in our sky. No knife, no scissors can ever sever our hearts from our kites.”
― Charlson Ong, Of That Other Country We Now Speak and Other Stories

“I find it hard to understand how certain people can be such an essential component of someone's life one day and then just disappear the next. Shouldn't it be able to endure forever?”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“Don't let attachment stop you from leaving someone who isn't right for you.”
― Garima Soni - words world

“If I am honest, it's hard for me to keep my promise to myself and to Gail to hate my father and only love my mother, especially on the days Gail takes everything out on me. Instead of blaming her, I learn to blame myself. After all, I am the one who swore total allegiance to her.”
― Moon Unit Zappa, Earth to Moon: A Memoir