Challenging Relationships Quotes

I'll take care of my mother," he said grimly. "I love her, but she doesn't run my life." "Yeah, that's what we all say. You. Me. Lucy." She stabbed the stick into the dirt. "These are powerful women. They're sane, they're smart, they rule their worlds, and they love us ferociously. A potent combination that makes it touch to pretend they're normal mothers.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Someone with whom we have a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow...those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds--the places where we feel we can't love any more, can't connect any more deeply, can't forgive past a certain point. We are in each other's lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.

If everybody loves you, something is wrong. Find at least one enemy to keep you alert.

Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.

I think mothers and daughters are meant to give birth to each other, over and over; that is why our challenges to each other are so fierce; that is why, when love and trust have not been too badly blemished or destroyed, the teaching and learning one from the other is so indelible and bittersweet. We daughters must risk losing the only love we instinctively feel we can't live without in order to be who we are, and I am convinced this sends a message to our mothers to break their own chains, though they may be anchored in prehistory and attached to their own great grandmothers' hearts.

Some of the best people with whom you can have a relationship are the people who challenge your thinking.

Marriage is a very difficult relationship for nearly everyone and I'm sure you shouldn't do it if you want a quiet little easy life.

It's not easy having a good marriage--but I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow. Easy doesn't make you think. I thank God everyday that I am married to a man who makes me think. That's my definition of true love.

A relationship is hard in and of itself. And having kids is really hard work, but I think it's really meaningful, as is a relationship. But they all take work.

It is your enemies who keep you straight. For real use one active, sneering enemy is worth two ordinary friends.

In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives

I don't go for safe options. Romantically, I go for people who are a pain in the ass.

I want someone who can respectfully challenge me. I know what I believe, so there's no point in my taking on a relationship with someone who thinks like me or laughs at what I laugh at. I enjoy being with someone who can offer me the opposite.

Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.

Love is divine only and difficult always.

Whether I'm running, working, relating, parenting, learning - whatever I'm doing, I want to surround myself with people who push me.

It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care.

But you're the hardest thing I've ever done, and you're also the best. So... I think that's the moral of the story here. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

The relationship that tests/frustrates/irritates you the most actually is one of your greatest blessings. Why? Because it reveals to you the very beliefs/fears and false assumptions that most limit you.

We know - relationships in this sport, it's very hard to have a really great relationship.

If everyone's happy, then I'm the character where when I enter that means there's trouble. In a movie, when I enter, it's not a good thing. But I know where I'm at. But, you know, you don't have to call me by my character's name for months on end. Football taught me that, because you can go from being best friends to having to play that person on another team, you have to be able to turn that on and off. You need to find that middle ground.

I think it's more fun to grow to love characters who are flawed than it is to present perfect characters. Perfect characters aren't very funny. Certainly my friends are a strange, intense bunch of people, and people's families drive them crazy, but challenging relationships are always more rewarding.

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

Sustaining true friendship is a lot more challenging than we give it credit for.