“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
― Milan Kundera

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”
― John Lennon

Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not ‘smash their mommy’ and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.”
― bell hooks

Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends – and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam’s passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well.”
― Stasi Eldredge

“I wanted to punch him and understand him at the same time.”
― Shannon A. Thompson

“We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.”
― Mother Teresa

“I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more.”
― Chief Joseph

“Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no ‘normal,’ because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. ”
― Chuck Klosterman

“I killed a plant once because I gave
it too much water. Lord, I worry
that love is violence.”
― José Olivarez

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood,the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”
― Oscar A. Romero

“We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.”
― R.D. Laing

“Loving someone who hates
themselves
is a special kind of violence.
A fight inside the bones.
A war within the blood.”
― Yrsa Daley-Ward

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