Angry Husband Quotes

I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.

If you have feelings for someone, let them know. It doesn’t matter if they can be in your life or not. Maybe, it is just enough for both of you to release the truth, so healing can occur. The opposite is true, as well. If you don’t have feelings for someone then never let another person suggest that you do. Protect your reputation and be responsible for the wrong information spread about you. Never allow anyone to live with a false belief or unfounded hope about you. An honorable person sets the record straight, so that person can move on with their life.

I'd told him I was someone else, and then I started getting angry that he couldn't see who I really was.

I feel angry but not homocidal; this may be unlooked-for progress.

She was suddenly angry. Angry that this woman was so effortlessly pretty. Angry that tonight she would sleep beside her doting husband. That soon she would hold a wrinkled, wailing baby in her arms and that child would never question whether it was loved, or whether its parents loved each other. Nothing Levana wanted had ever come that easily.

Jen put her hands on her hips and pinned Sally with the famous 'you're going to spit it out or I'm going to rip it out of you’ look. "You talked?" Jen asked sarcastically. "Sally," she cleared her throat then continued, "you have a mate. A guaranteed husband. A sure thing. Not to mention he's hot, funny, sweet, and he has a dimple. You talked?" She repeated. This time Jen's voice was skeptical. Before Sally could defend herself, however, her door opened slowly, calculatingly. "I know you weren't describing me Jennifer. So who is this male who has caught your eye so descriptively? Please do tell, so that I can rip him to pieces." Decebel's power filled the room and Sally took an involuntary step away from the very angry Alpha.

I was angry with you. (Callie) For what? (Sin) Sleeping on the floor again. What is it with you and the floor? Most women have to fear their husbands are in the bed of another. Me, ’tis the hearth I envy. (Callie)

But that doesn't mean to say, of course, there aren't occasions now and then - extremely desolate occasions - when you think to yourself: 'What a terrible mistake I've made with my life.' And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that's when I get angry about some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do, I realize before long - my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there's no turning back the clock now. One can't be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.

My husband's family is religious. His relatives believe in God. Their God is angry and unkind because they made him in their image.

I felt angry, frustrated. I felt I didn't belong, not in my church, not in my home, not in my skin. Amidst the chaos, i felt alone, in need of a friend instead of a sister, someone detached from my world. The "woman's role" theory disgusted me. I would soon be a woman, and I knew I could never perform as expected. I was tired of my mom's submission to her religion, to her husband's sick quest for an heir, to his abuse. I was sick of my dad, of reaching for him as he fell farther away from us and into the arms of Johnnie WB.

A man worth being with is one… That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another’s life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.

Don't constantly make angry your wife. Once she throws you out of her heart, there is no appeal

One day, I was going to have someone fuck me over and then not play the you’ve-got-every-right-to-be-angry card to guilt me out of being angry.

When I focus on the way "men" or "husbands" generally behave, I start to lump Jamie along with half of humanity. I find myself feeling angry or annoyed with Jamie for things he hasn't even done.

Single women could work all they wanted; married women locked themselves into a gilded cage. All of that had seemed natural before. Now, it made me angry. Now, I saw how a woman might sometimes want to steer her own course rather than trail her husband like a favored dog.

Husbands are always angry, that's their nature. And the nature of us women, is not to pay a blind bit of notice.

I sat down at his tombstone, and I cried out everything within me. I cried until I felt depleted. I did not say a single thing. I did not feel any need. I had talked to Harry in my head and my heart for so long, for so many years, that it felt as if we transcended words. He had been the one to help me, to support me, through everything in my life. And now I needed him more than ever. So I went to him the only way I knew how. I let him heal me as only he could. And then I stood up, dusted off my skirt, and turned around. There, in the trees, were two paparazzi taking my photo. I was neither angry nor flattered. I simply didn’t care. It cost so much, caring. I didn’t have any currency to spend on it.

Ayrs let long moments fall away. ‘You’re young, Frobisher, you’re rich, you’ve got a brain, and by all accounts you’re not wholly repugnant. I’m not sure why you stay on here.’… …Couldn’t say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia or scorn…Jocasta seemed angry with me. ‘What?’ I hissed. ‘My husband loves you,’ said the wife, dressing.

Did the tsar refuse to marry you?" I asked. I thought the duke might have been angry with her if he had: he hadn't seemed like a man to be satisfied if his plans went awry. "No," she said. "I am tsarina. For as long as I live." She said it dryly, as if she didn't expect that to last long. "The tsar is a black sorcerer. He is possessed by a demon of flame that wants to devour me." I laughed; I couldn't help it. It wasn't mirth, it was bitterness. "So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.

Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism. Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief. You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience very long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because something in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day. Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light. Jesus is the light of the world. We know that this world is a dark place sometimes, but we need not walk in darkness. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion. We need him, and He is ready to come to us, if we'll open the door and let him.

I spent years being angry with God because He never gave me the husband I wanted. All those years gone, wasted! I should have enjoyed each day as it came and recognized that if I remained single it was because God knew singleness was best for me.

Maybe her silence was another way to express scorn. There is a saying: empty vessels make the loudest sounds. Maybe that was the principal behind Naomi’s silence. Maybe she was emptied, spent, angry. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 31

Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an “angry black woman.” I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it “angry” or “black” or “woman”? I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel. I’ve heard about the swampy parts of the internet that question everything about me, right down to whether I’m a woman or a man.

I'd told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he couldn't see who I really was.

None of it was Ernie's fault. I'd told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he couldn't see who I really was.

I could have hated him for saying it: it was like a claim. If you really loved me, I thought, you'd behave like any other injured husband. You'd get angry and your anger would set me free.

Some days he wishes that he could simply empty the chambers of the men, fill the halls instead with women: the short sharp shock of three thousand two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones, the clever ones, the ones in hairnets, the ones exhausted by all the dying. They carried their sorrow--not with photos under their arms, or with public wailing, or by beating their chests, but with a weariness around the eyes.

I Don’t Even Like Him—How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It’s hard to pray for someone when you’re angry or he’s hurt you. But that’s exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don’t have to “pretty it up” for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we’re willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He

Our society has become the angry leered-at woman who doesn’t care that men can build buildings or do amazing things like be good dads, husbands and sons. She focuses instead on the small flaws that some men have and extrapolates to all men; they are all dogs, rapists, perverts, deadbeats and worthless.

...and killed a trellsow, one of the ones he'd learned to recognize as a smith. And thought of Thorlot, who might be a better blacksmith than her father or brother or dead husband, or more than her son would be, but who would never be anything more than wife, sister, daughter, mother. At least she was honored, he thought, wrenching his axe free of the trellsmith's ribs. He didn't mean Thorlot, and he did not know whether he was angry at his own kind for their blindness or angry at the trolls for making him see how blind they were.

Still, I am angry with him. I am very angry with him. With my poor dead defenseless husband, I am furious as I was rarely—perhaps never—furious with him, in life. How can I forgive you, you’ve ruined both our lives.

I guess I was always looking for something. What it was, I didn’t know. I wanted help from the VA, but didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to be subjected to that second-rate treatment any longer. I wanted to find peace within myself, but didn’t know how or where to locate it. I wanted to be a sergeant again, a writer, less angry, a better husband, and to ward off the constant bombardment of war-related thoughts. Most of all, I didn’t want any more Americans coming home from Iraq in boxes or with jingle-jangled minds.

The short sharp shock of three thousand mother two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones, the clever ones, the ones in hairnets, the ones exhausted by all the dying. They carried their sorrow - not with photos under their arms, or with public wailing, or by beating their chests, but with a weariness around the eyes. Mothers and daughters and children and grandmothers, too. They never fought the wars, but they suffered them, blood and bone.

They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-–something they heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and he believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries––perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on.

I felt, suddenly, pinned in place. Without breath. Without time or motion - like a butterfly stuck to a board with a needle through its thorax. What is anger, anyway? What does anger do? My mother was not an angry person. Or at least I don't think she was. My aunt was so angry that it became too much for her own body. It destroyed her house and swallowed her husband and left a broken family behind. I didn't want that, but I didn't know what to do with my anger. I felt the wold shake, and I felt my skin burn, and I let out a volcano of words that rattled my teeth as they came out.

Do you even feel anything, Chad? Will you for once stop walking around, all in control and f'ing calm? Do you have any idea what you all have done. I lost everything, Chad. Everything, when Kyle died. I lost myself. I had finally begun to build a new life with new friends. With people I thought cared about me. I have started to be just a little bit happy again. Was it too much to ask? Did I ask for too much by just wanting to have a little bit of a life again? Now, it’s all screwed up again and you walk around here like you don’t feel anything about what’s happened.” Chad spun around, and for only the second time since she’d known him, she saw the flash of anger so fierce her breath caught in her throat and she took an involuntary step back, away from him. Jennie knew Chad would never hurt her on purpose, but the anger rolling off of him was palpable. It seemed to force her backwards as if it had a life of its own, a power of its own. “Not feel anything, Jennie? Are you f'ing kidding me? I walk around here every day and I ache every f'ing minute I’m with you. I’m so twisted up with loving you and hating you, I can’t breathe. I can’t keep my hands off you, but I can’t let myself kiss you because I might lose myself in you. I can’t make love to you because I’m afraid you’ll pretend I’m him. I know you want his arms around you, not mine. I know you want it to be his baby inside you, not mine. And I know you can’t love me back, no matter what I do, because you’re still so in love with your husband, you can’t even begin to see me.” Chad didn’t stop and Jennie didn’t try to stop him. “And every day, I have to sit here and wonder how I’ll be a part of my baby’s life. I wonder if you’ll let me be in the delivery room, if you’ll let me help you name the baby. I wonder how much money I’d have to offer the people who live across the street from you to get them to sell me their house, just so I can see my child grow up. If you’ll let me...” Chad stopped as if he’d run out of steam. They stood in uneasy silence for a long time before Chad spoke again. He sounded worn out and bitter and angry, mirroring Jennie’s chaos of emotions. “Am I feeling anything? Yeah. I’m feeling some f'ing sh**, Jen.

Fairly early on in our marriage, my husband found out that a big strong hug cured just about any ailment a woman might have. Sadness, anger, frustration, fear, low self-esteem, hopelessness, bad hair—nothing stands a chance against a powerful hug. Now I can’t imagine it’s easy to step up and hug an angry woman, but from the perspective of the person being hugged, I can tell you that love trumps anger every time—even when it’s the hugger the huggee is angry at.

Because internalizers look within themselves for reasons why things go wrong, they may not always recognize abuse for what it is. If parents don’t label their own behavior as abusive, their child won’t label it that way either. Even as adults, many people have no idea that what happened to them in childhood was abusive. As a result, they may not recognize abusive behavior in their adult relationships. For instance, Vivian hesitated to tell me about her husband’s anger, saying it was too silly and insignificant to talk about. She then sheepishly told me that he’d broken things when angry and once threw her craft project on the floor because he wanted her to keep the house neater. As it turned out, Vivian was embarrassed to tell me because she thought I’d say his behavior was normal and tell her she was making a mountain out of a molehill. Another client, a middle-aged man, recounted incidents of childhood abuse nonchalantly, with no recognition of how serious it had been. For example, he said his father once choked him until he wet himself and then locked him in the basement. Recalling that his father had once thrown a stereo set, he admitted that his father “might have had a temper.” As he spoke, his demeanor clearly indicated that he accepted this behavior as normal.

She knew what the laugh implied, and it angered her. “Mrs. Wells don’t you be getting any ideas about my husband.

To my husband, for accepting without judging, loving without conditions, laughing instead of getting angry, and thinking of others before yourself. I’m the lucky one.

I suck at fighting. I have never really learned how to talk and be mad at the same time. If I have angry words to say, I need time to rehearse. I can't improvise when my head's dizzy with adrenaline; I have to cool down and then write out a script. I found this trait very difficult when I was trying to be a boyfriend, because in my experience, boyfriends and girlfriends often spend a lot of time fighting. Husbands and wives seem to spend a lot of time avoiding fights. This might be a bad thing, for all I know, but it seems to be part of why I like being a husband better.

The second most common misconception about love is the idea that dependency is love. This is a misconception with which psychotherapists must deal on a daily basis. Its effect is seen most dramatically in an individual who makes an attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide or who becomes incapacitatingly depressed in response to a rejection or separation from spouse or lover. Such a person says, “I do not want to live, I cannot live without my husband [wife, girl friend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.” And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girl friend, boyfriend].” “What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].” I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

No, you are not because I am going to,” Roxbury said darkly, probably still angry about those pesky rumors about his preferences. “How could you deny me that satisfaction?” she asked. “Very well, my dear wife, we shall seek and destroy the Man About Town together,” Roxbury agreed. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” Julianna said sweetly, and her husband grinned.

You wrote to me. Do not deny it. I’ve read your words and they evoke My deep respect for your emotion, Your trusting soul… and sweet devotion. Your candour has a great appeal And stirs in me, I won’t conceal, Long dormant feelings, scarce remembered. But I’ve no wish to praise you now; Let me repay you with a vow As artless as the one you tendered; Hear my confession too, I plead, And judge me both by word and deed. 13 ’Had I in any way desired To bind with family ties my life; Or had a happy fate required That I turn father, take a wife; Had pictures of domestication For but one moment held temptation- Then, surely, none but you alone Would be the bride I’d make my own. I’ll say without wrought-up insistence That, finding my ideal in you, I would have asked you—yes, it’s true— To share my baneful, sad existence, In pledge of beauty and of good, And been as happy … as I could! 14 ’But I’m not made for exaltation: My soul’s a stranger to its call; Your virtues are a vain temptation, For I’m not worthy of them all. Believe me (conscience be your token): In wedlock we would both be broken. However much I loved you, dear, Once used to you … I’d cease, I fear; You’d start to weep, but all your crying Would fail to touch my heart at all, Your tears in fact would only gall. So judge yourself what we’d be buying, What roses Hymen means to send— Quite possibly for years on end! 15 ’In all this world what’s more perverted Than homes in which the wretched wife Bemoans her worthless mate, deserted— Alone both day and night through life; Or where the husband, knowing truly Her worth (yet cursing fate unduly) Is always angry, sullen, mute— A coldly jealous, selfish brute! Well, thus am I. And was it merely For this your ardent spirit pined When you, with so much strength of mind, Unsealed your heart to me so clearly? Can Fate indeed be so unkind? Is this the lot you’ve been assigned? 16 ’For dreams and youth there’s no returning; I cannot resurrect my soul. I love you with a tender yearning, But mine must be a brother’s role. So hear me through without vexation: Young maidens find quick consolation— From dream to dream a passage brief; Just so a sapling sheds its leaf To bud anew each vernal season. Thus heaven wills the world to turn. You’ll fall in love again; but learn … To exercise restraint and reason, For few will understand you so, And innocence can lead to woe.

and Hadia I decided in that moment that she too hated them all—her brother, who made everything difficult for himself. Her mother, who turned against her own children just to stand by her husband. Huda with a smug look on her face, and how provoking Amar’s anger was like a game to her. They were all cruel to each other. They could not even get through one dinner. She stared at the food on her plate and made a silent pact with herself: she would work hard, she would study, and she would find herself a new family. And new house that never got angry, A home where weeks would pass without a voice raised.

As an example, when Zeus is dallying with the nymph Io, Hera spots them, so he turns Io into a lovely white heifer. Hera, not fooled, seizes the cow and places her under the guard of a giant named Argus Panoptes (“All-Seeing”) because his body is covered with one hundred eyes (making him, quite literally, the first private eye called in by a wife to intervene in a case of adultery). Zeus sends in the god Hermes to tell him a boring, endless story, which gradually puts Argus to sleep, one eye at a time; then Hermes kills him and frees Io. Not done, Hera sends a gadfly to chase Io (an apt choice for hassling a cow), which stings her all the way to Egypt. Hera takes all of the eyes from Argus’ corpse and puts them on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock. Take away the fanciful elements and the metamorphoses, and you have a classic story of an unfaithful husband confronted by an angry wife who tries to get even with the other woman.

There's a hardness I'm seeing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now. Maybe it's just because I'm with an older gang now.[...]I mean nobody even has hobbies these days. Not that I can see. Husbands and wives both work. Kids are farmed out to schools and video games. Nobody seems able to endure simply being themselves, either - but at the same time they're isolated. People work much more, only go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. I see these things. The world is only about work: work work work get get get...racing ahead...getting sacked from work...going online...knowing computer languages...winning contracts. I mean, it's just not what I would have imagined the world might be if you'd asked me seventeen years ago. People are frazzled and angry, desperate about money, and, at best, indifferent to the future.

[...] I had to press against the Plexiglas to feel the blood and body heat of his loss, stare hard at the loss so I could remember how its face was shaped, the exact color of its eyes, something to get me through the next year of living with my husband and not his loss, but the lack of his loss, a bleached-out version of it, a numb heart that hosted something with a real heart and pulse and wildness because my husband had only the most basic pulse and absolutely no wildness, but his loss was wild, was wild and filled with fast blood, and I could understand that angry bright red thing.

Lost in the stormy kiss, Elizabeth felt her legs gliding down his as he gently lowered her against him until her feet touched the floor. But when his fingers pulled at the ribbon that held her gown in place at her shoulder, she jerked free of his kiss, automatically clamping her hand over his. “What are you doing?” she asked in a quaking whisper. His fingers stilled, and Ian lifted his heavy-lidded gaze to hers. The question took him by surprise, but as he stared into her green eyes Ian saw her apprehension, and he had a good idea what was causing it. “What do you think I’m doing?” he countered cautiously. She hesitated, as if unwilling even to accuse him of such an unspeakable act, and then she admitted in a small, reluctant voice, “Disrobing me.” “And that surprises you?” “Surprises me? Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it?” Elizabeth asked, more suspicious than ever of what Lucinda had told her. Quietly he said, “What exactly do you know about what takes place between a husband and wife in bed?” “You-you mean ‘as it pertains to the creation of children’?” she said, quoting his words to her the day she agreed to become betrothed to him. He smiled with tender amusement at her phrasing. “I suppose you can call it that-for now.” “Only what Lucinda told me.” He waited to hear an explanation, and Elizabeth reluctantly added, “She said a husband kisses his wife in bed and that it hurts the first time, and that is how it is done.” Ian hesitated, angry with himself for not having followed his own instincts and questioned her further when she seemed fully informed and without maidenly qualms about lovemaking. As gently as he could, he said, “You’re a very intelligent young woman, love, not an overly fastidious spinster like your former duenna. Now, do you honestly believe the rules of nature would be completely set aside for people?

An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her anger must be picked over, examined, and debated. My anger must stand the scrutiny of the court of law, of evidentiary procedures. I must prove it comes from somewhere justified and not just because one time some man touched my sister. Or because at one time some man touched some woman and he will continue on and on. Or because my pay is unequal and the pay of women of color is less equal than mine. Or because I had to have my husband tell my parents to stop forcing me to meet my sister’s abuser for a reconciliation meeting, because they wouldn’t listen to me, because my angry vagina rendered me mute.

And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was.

Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. [...] And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries--perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on.

But I’m not just shocked. I’m also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I’m angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I’m heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you’ll go, in what you’ll accept, and pretty soon you’re at the bottom. You’ve become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don’t mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing.

She was undoubtedly trying to set me up with one of her husband’s friends again. And while they were all nice guys, which seemed to be my biggest problem with them, they were pushovers, metrosexual girly men that did nothing for me except make me angry and want to slap them across the face with a lacy thong and ask them what they’d done with their balls.

Randy Cutter was quite angry with my daughter and her husband over a parcel of land,” Caroline explained. “It got pretty ugly at the time. William bought a piece of farmland that Randy thought should have gone to him. It came to blows, lawyers got involved. When several of their livestock were found dead, William was sure Randy Cutter had something to do with it.

The decades that she devoted to conserving her husband’s legacy made Eliza only more militantly loyal to his memory, and there was one injury she could never forget: the exposure of the Maria Reynolds affair, for which she squarely blamed James Monroe. In the 1820s, after Monroe had completed two terms as president, he called upon Eliza in Washington, D.C., hoping to thaw the frost between them. Eliza was then about seventy and staying at her daughter’s home. She was sitting in the backyard with her fifteen-year-old nephew when a maid emerged and presented the ex-president’s card. Far from being flattered by this distinguished visitor, Eliza was taken aback. “She read the name and stood holding the card, much perturbed,” said her nephew. “Her voice sank and she spoke very low, as she always did when she was angry. ‘What has that man come to see me for?’” The nephew said that Monroe must have stopped by to pay his respects. She wavered. “I will see him,” she finally agreed. So the small woman with the upright carriage and the sturdy, determined step marched stiffly into the house. When she entered the parlor, Monroe rose to greet her. Eliza then did something out of character and socially unthinkable: she stood facing the ex-president but did not invite him to sit down. With a bow, Monroe began what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech, stating “that it was many years since they had met, that the lapse of time brought its softening influences, that they both were nearing the grave, when past differences could be forgiven and forgotten.” Eliza saw that Monroe was trying to draw a moral equation between them and apportion blame equally for the long rupture in their relationship. Even at this late date, thirty years after the fact, she was not in a forgiving mood. “Mr. Monroe,” she told him, “if you have come to tell me that you repent, that you are sorry, very sorry, for the misrepresentations and the slanders and the stories you circulated against my dear husband, if you have come to say this, I understand it. But otherwise, no lapse of time, no nearness to the grave, makes any difference.” Monroe took in this rebuke without comment. Stunned by the fiery words delivered by the elderly little woman in widow’s weeds, the ex-president picked up his hat, bid Eliza good day, and left the house, never to return.

Faced with the daunting prospect of moving forward, of embracing a life of greater flourishing, we find ourselves losing hope. The sex addict returns to his favorite pornographic sites. The workaholic returns to his busy schedule, knowing that his schedule kills any chance of intimacy with his wife or connection with his children. The angry wife defaults to her husband’s defensiveness, squelching his spirit. The abused woman returns to a relationship where she knows she’ll be used rather than loved. The religious addict defaults to her legalistic ways, judging others rather than embracing the love God has for her even in her failures. Over and over again, we choose to return to Egypt instead of daring to enter the promised land. We settle for less than the life for which God made us.

It is true that often she doesn't want advice; she wants a listening ear. At the same time, however, the wise wife will realize her husband's desire to help and advise is strong. She should refrain from getting angry and humor him a bit, as one wife did by saying, "Thanks for the input. I know I am not the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to certain things. I am glad we have each other.

Her gaze dropped to the right side of his mouth, to the corner of his lip that was permanently pulled into a slight snarl by the edge of the angry scar, and then to the other side of his mouth, to the sensuous curve of his lips. She raised her hand, reaching out to touch that perfect curl. She stilled, her hand hovering, as the sunlight glinted off the ruby ring on her finger. It was a pretty little ring, delicate and made for a woman. In any other circumstances she would've worn it with happiness. Here, though... Well it was almost a mark of possession, wasn't it? Iris inhaled and jerked her hand back before she made contact. This man might be her 'husband' now- courtesy of a series of terrible events and his own stubbornness, but he was still a stranger. A stranger she wasn't even sure she could entirely trust.

I do have a bad habit,” he says. “of falling in love. With regularity and to spectacular effect. You see, it never goes well.” I wonder if this conversation makes him think of our kiss, but then, I was the one who kissed him. He’d only kissed back. “As charming as you are, how can that be?” I say. He laughs again. “That’s what my sister Taryn always says. She tells me that I remind her of her late husband. Which makes some sense, since I would be his half brother. But it’s also alarming, because she’s the one who murdered him.” Much as when he spoke about Madoc, it’s strange how fond Oak can sound when he tells me a horrifying thing a member of his family has done. “Whom have you fallen in love with?” I ask. “Well, there was you,” the prince says. “When we were children.” “Me?” I ask incredulously. “You didn’t know?” He appears to be merry in the face of my astonishment. “Oh yes. Though you were a year my senior, and it was hopeless, I absolutely mooned over you. When you were gone from Court, I refused any food but tea and toast for a month.” I cannot help snorting over the sheer absurdity of his statement. He puts a hand to my heart. “Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women. He cannot expect me to believe he had real feelings. “Stop with your games.” “Very well,” he says. “Shall we go to the next? Her name was Lara, a mortal at the school I attended when I lived with my eldest sister and her girlfriend. Sometimes Lara and I would climb into the crook of one of the maple trees and share sandwiches. But she had a villainous friend, who implicated me in a piece of gossip—which resulted in Lara stabbing me with a lead pencil and breaking off our relationship.” “You do like cruel women,” I say. “Then there was Violet, a pixie. I wrote terrible poetry about how I adored her. Unfortunately, she adored duels and would get into trouble so that I would have to fight for her honor. And even more unfortunately, neither my sister nor my father bothered to teach me how to fight for show. I thought of the dead-eyed expression on his face before his bout with the ogre and Tiernan’s angry words. “That resulted in my accidentally killing a person she liked better than me.” “Oh,” I say. “That is three levels of unfortunate.” “Then there was Sibi, who wanted to run away from Court with me, but as soon as we went, hated it and wept until I took her home. And Loana, a mermaid, who found my lack of a tail unbearable but tried to drown me anyway, because she found it equally unbearable that I would ever love another.” The way he tells these stories makes me recall how he’s told me many painful things before. Some people laugh in the face of death. He laughed in the face of despair. “How old were you?” “Fifteen, with the mermaid,” he said. “And nearly three years later, I must surely be wiser.” “Surely,” I say, wondering if he was. Wondering if I wanted him to be.

Lord,I love you truly with all my heart. Every moment with you is precious to me but I would give up even that if it meant peace between our peoples. Nothing else can be allowed to matter so much as that." Dragon did not reply. He was staring at her very oddly. Of the others, she had no awareness at all. Only he existed for her just then.She felt as though there was no ground beneath her but this time instead of falling as she had off the cliff, she soared frantically, desperately,not knowing if at any moment gravity might reclaim her but soaring all the same. "What did you say?" he demanded. "Nothing else can be allowed to matter so much as the peace between our peoples! I understand full well how angry you are. The insult done you was profound,but I beg you,think of what you do.Do you go against my father,he wins!" Slowly,Dragon shook his head as though trying to clear it. His gaze locked on Rycca's like a man holding fast to the rudder in a mighty storm. A dull flush crept over his high-boned cheeks. "Insult? You think I want to kill your father because he insulted me? For pity's sake, woman, I damn near lost you! Don't you have any idea what that means to me?" Her eyes widened, never leaving him as he stalked across the stone floor of the Saxon's king's great hall and took firm hold of her by her shoulders. He dragged her up against him even as he near yelled, "Dammit to hell, woman, I love you! What care I for insults? Nothing matters to me save keeping you safe and-" "Love?" Rycca repeated in a daze. "Loki take you, lady, you are not the easiet woman in the world to get along with, you know! You are strong, spirited, stubborn, not a meek bone in your body! Your body...Never mind that, the point is you have stolen into my heart and I lack any will to get you out, so do not dare you think of dying! I absolutely forbid it! Did you say you love me?" Oh,my,Rycca thought, she truly did have wings after all.Strong, sturdy wings that would carry her as high as she wanted to climb. And that was very high indeed. A smile crept over her clear to her toes.She cupped her husband's face between her hands and took his mouth with hers.Well and thoroughly did she kiss him right there in front of everyone. That took some time, and when she was done she was rather breathless. Yet she managed to say, "I love you, lord.More than life,more even than freedom.You are dearest to me above all." And for just a moment, there in the hall of the king,Rycca of Landsende saw the sheen of tears in her Viking's eyes.

Writer Camille Paglia offers a refreshing exception to this disparagement of men, as pointed out by Christina Hoff Sommers: For Paglia, male aggressiveness and competitiveness are animating principles of creativity: “Masculinity is aggressive, unstable, and combustible. It is also the most creative cultural force in history.” Speaking of the “fashionable disdain for ‘patriarchal society’ to which nothing good is ever attributed,” she writes, “But it is the patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.” “Men,” writes Paglia, “created the world we live in and the luxuries we enjoy”: “When I cross the George Washington Bridge or any of America’s great bridges, I think—men have done this. Construction is a sublime male poetry.”1 Our society has become the angry leered-at woman who doesn’t care that men can build buildings or do amazing things like be good dads, husbands and sons. She focuses instead on the small flaws that some men have and extrapolates to all men; they are all dogs, rapists, perverts, deadbeats and worthless. Who needs them? We

Editors and readers of the New York Daily News want us to know that race had nothing to do with the ten black people who stopped a car and beat a young white couple in Brooklyn. All the while yelling racial epithets. “It’s not just a black and white thing,” reported the Daily News. “It’s stupid teenagers thinking they can do whatever they want.”[806] They just happen to be black. And the fact they just happen to be black astronomically out of proportion has no meaning. Got it? The attack happened Monday, in October 2013, six days before the Daily News got around to doing a story on it. A group of 10 black youths — one of them a 12-year-old girl — pummeled a husband and wife in Brooklyn after peppering the couple with racial slurs, authorities said. “Get those crackers!” some of them screamed, according to court papers. “Get that white whore!

Acid filled Sara’s mouth. It wasn’t fair. That’s what Sara wanted to say. To scream at the top of her lungs. It just wasn’t fair. Lena wasn’t strong. She would bend, not break. She would recover from this tragedy the same easy way she recovered from every other tragedy before. Even if she lost Jared, Lena would always know what it felt like to have his child growing inside of her. She could always hold her baby’s hand and think of holding Jared’s. She could see her child laugh and learn and grow and play sports and do school projects and graduate from college and Lena would always, always remember her husband. She would see Jared in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On her deathbed, she would find peace in the knowledge that they had made something beautiful together. That even in death, they would both go on living. “Sara,” Faith said. “What’s happening here?” Sara wiped her eyes, angry that she was back in the same dark place she’d started at this morning. “Why does everything come so damn easy to her?” She struggled to speak. Her throat clenched around every word that wanted to come out of her mouth. “Everything just opens up, and she always walks through unscathed and—” Sara had to stop for breath. “It’s just so easy for her. She always has it so goddamn easy.

1)    The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3)    He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4)    He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7)    He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14)   He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17)   He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

But if he is angry at the world for doing him harm, why does he take it out on his loving partner? Couldn’t he just as readily express his rage by playing racquetball or pounding pillows. His ideas about her role seem paradoxical. On the one hand, the narcissistic husband has vested his wife with tremendous power. She is necessary for his self-repair, but instead of valuing her and seeking comfort in her arms, he beats and humiliates her. Because he sees her as available to meet any and all of his needs, he releases his rage and any self-hate at her; such an act helps him ultimately feel powerful again, making him realize he is not weak and shattered. When the narcissistic man eels the terror and rage associated with his own internal fragmentation, his outburst restores his sense of power and control. He turns the anger expanding within him away from himself, toward his wife. He insists that she’s the defective one, she’s to blame, because she has not met his needs. Such acts of externalization are key to the NPD batterer. His violent behavior restores his self-esteem. He believes that his actions are not his fault; he is just trying to take care of himself.

Eider nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Glokta's face. 'That must have been hard. To come back, after all that time in the darkness, and to find that your friends had no use for you. To see in their faces only guilt, and pity, and disgust. To find yourself alone.' Glokta's eyelid was twitching, and he rubbed at it gently. He had never discussed such things with anyone before. And now here I am, discussing them with a stranger. 'There can be no doubt that I'm a tragic figure. I used to be a shit of a man, now I'm a husk of one. Take your pick.' 'I imagine it makes you sick, to be treated that way. Very sick, and very angry.' If only you knew. 'It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer.' 'On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell.' Eider frowned. Something for her to think about, perhaps? 'I would have thought your pain would give you empathy.' 'Empathy? What's that?' Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. 'It's a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

Once the exhilaration of their reunion wore off, once the newness of their lovemaking was no longer so new, how would she see him? No matter how careful he was, invariably someday he would do something to make her angry. What then? Would all the old unhappiness rush to the fore? Would she remember that he had once betrayed her and regret that she’d ever given him a second chance? Or would she protect herself from the beginning by keeping a certain distance from him, so that their closeness would always fall short of true communion, always denying him that final forgiveness so that he could never hurt her again?

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, h eart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits.

In the stories of faith I grew up with, men were allowed a full range of emotion: King David, who calls on God to destroy his enemies. Absalom rising up against his father the king. Jonah stewing under his tree, looking out on the city God saved but he hates. Job crying out to God for his miserable fate. But the rage of good women in the Bible is all in the subtext. Nowhere is there an Eve angry for being removed from Eden and the loss of her two sons. Where is Esther, where is her horror and pain watching the genocide of her people? Or Ruth, who followed her miserable mother-in-law to a foreign land and had to listen to that lady bitching as if she felt nothing? The women allowed to have feelings in the Bible are always the villains. Michal sneering at David that he ought to put his clothes on and stop dancing like a naked fool. She is indicted for her words, but hadn’t she just been married, abandoned, and then taken back by this man? Used as a political pawn, then ignored for Bathsheba. Then there is Sarah, who beat her maidservant Hagar, blaming her for what should have rightly fallen on the shoulders of Abraham. And Job’s wife, who Biblical scholars condemn for telling her husband to curse God and die. But wasn’t she just wishing him a swift end to the suffering that they had walked through hand in hand?

She merely wiped the floor with paper towels and said nothing, brushing her free hand against my shoulder blade—my shoulder blade!—as she carried the soaked paper to the trash can, never holding me fast, refraining not out of lack of humanity but out of fear of being drawn into a request for further tenderness, a request that could only bring her face-to-face with some central revulsion, a revulsion of her husband or herself or both, a revulsion that had come from nowhere, or from her, or perhaps from something I’d done or failed to do, who knew, she didn’t want to know, it was too great a disappointment, far better to get on with the chores, with the baby, with the work, far better to leave me to my own devices, as they say, to leave me to resign myself to certain motifs, to leave me to disappear guiltily into a hole of my own digging. When the time came to stop her from leaving, I did not know what to think or wish for, her husband who was now an abandoner, a hole-dweller, a leaver who had left her to fend for herself, as she said, who’d failed to provide her with the support and intimacy she needed, she complained, who was lacking some fundamental wherewithal, who no longer wanted her, who beneath his scrupulous marital motions was angry, whose sentiments had decayed into a mere sense of responsibility, a husband who, when she shouted, “I don’t need to be provided for! I’m a lawyer! I make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year! I need to be loved!” had silently picked up the baby and smelled the baby’s sweet hair, and had taken the baby for a crawl in the hotel corridor, and afterward washed the baby’s filthy hands and soft filthy knees, and thought about what his wife had said, and saw the truth in her words and an opening, and decided to make another attempt at kindness, and at nine o’clock, with the baby finally drowsy in his cot, came with a full heart back to his wife to find her asleep, as usual, and beyond waking. In short, I fought off the impulse to tell Rachel to go fuck herself.

Maybe it’s Lucy. Maybe she ignored everything I said to her and came back to me. I know it’s wrong and she shouldn’t be here, but I just need her right now. I can see her one more time and then I’ll leave and I’ll walk away. She doesn’t feel the same and she doesn’t smell the same, but none of that matters. Her legs straddle my thighs and I clutch onto her ass, pulling her closer so she doesn’t change her mind and walk away. I don’t like her voice. It’s not the same soft, sweet cadence that always makes my ears tingle and my heart beat fast. It’s probably because my heart died and there’s nothing inside my chest but a shriveled up, useless organ. This voice is shrill and annoying. Lucy is changing right before me, but I don’t care. It’s my fault, anyway. It’s my fault she’s different and doesn’t feel the same or smell the same. I changed her, I hurt her…all my fault. She doesn’t taste the same and I hate it. I want my Lucy, not this drunken, morphed version of her. I hear angry shouts and the shuffling of feet and the Lucy on my lap speaks again and it makes me wince. I want to tell her to stop talking like that. Stop talking in a different voice, stop smelling different, stop feeling different…just stop it. Be MY Lucy. I need MY Lucy. I’m not a hero, I’m not a good man, I’m not a good husband…I am none of those things and they need to see that.

I was hoping Betsy Nash would disappear. Literally. She was so insubstantial, I could imagine her slowly evaporating, leaving only a sticky spot on the edge of the sofa. But she lingered, eyes darting between me and her husband before we even began speaking. Like she was winding up for the conversation. The children, too, hovered about, little blonde ghosts trapped in a limbo between indolence and stupidity. The pretty girl might do all right. But the piggy middle child, who now waddled dazedly into the room, was destined for needy sex and snack-cake bingeing. The boy was the type who’d end up drinking in gas-station parking lots. The kind of angry, bored kid I saw on my way into town.

and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox

Leaning back in his chair, Ian listened to Larimore’s irate summation of the wild and fruitless chase he’d been sent on for two days by Lady Thornton and her butler: “And after all that,” Larimore flung out in high dudgeon, “I returned to the house on Promenade Street to demand the butler allow me past the stoop, only to have the man-“ “Slam the door in your face?” Ian suggested dispassionately. “No, my lord, he invited me in,” Larimore bit out. “He invited me to search the house to my complete satisfaction. She’s left London,” Larimore finished, avoiding his employer’s narrowed gaze. “She’ll go to Havenhurst,” Ian said decisively, and he gave Larimore directions to find the small estate. When Larimore left, Ian picked up a contract he needed to read and approve; but before he’d read two lines Jordan stalked into his study unannounced, carrying a newspaper and wearing an expression Ian hadn’t seen before. “Have you seen the paper today?” Ian ignored the paper and studied his friend’s angry face instead. “No, why?” “Read it,” Jordan said, slapping it down on the desk. “Elizabeth allowed herself to be questioned by a reporter from the Times. Read that.” He jabbed his finger at a few lines near the bottom of the article about Elizabeth by one Mr. Thomas Tyson. “That was your wife’s response when Tyson asked her how she felt when she saw you on trial before your peers.” Frowning at Jordan’s tone, Ian read Elizabeth’s reply: My husband was not tried before his peers. He was merely tried before the Lords of the British Realm. Ian Thornton has no peers. Ian tore his gaze from the article, refusing to react to the incredible sweetness of her response, but Jordan would not let it go. “My compliments to you, Ian,” he said angrily. “You serve your wife with a divorce petition, and she responds by giving you what constitutes a public apology!” He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Ian behind to stare with clenched jaw at the article. One month later Elizabeth had still not been found. Ian continued trying to purge her from his mind and tear her from his heart, but with decreasing success. He knew he was losing ground in the battle, just as he had been slowly losing it from the moment he’d looked up and seen her walking into the House of Lords.

I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.

Does it undermine my image as a warrior to be with you?' 'No. Does it undermine Feyre's when she's seen with Rhys?' Her stomach tightened. Her heartbeat pulsed in her arms, her gut. 'It's different for them,' she made herself say as they reached the end of the bridge and turned to walk along the quay flanking the river. Cassian asked carefully. 'Why?' Nesta kept her focus on the glittering river, vibrant with the hues of sunset. 'Because they're mates.' At his utter silence, she knew what he'd say. Halted again, bracing herself for it. Cassian's face was a void. Completely empty as he said, 'And we're not?' Nesta said nothing. He huffed a laugh. 'Because they're mates and you don't want us to be.' 'That word means nothing to me, Cassian,' she said, voice thick as she tried to keep the people who strode past from overhearing. 'It means something to all of you, but for most of my life, husband and wife was as good as it got. Mate is just a word.' 'That's bullshit.' When she only began walking along the river again, he asked. 'Why are you frightened?' 'I'm not frightened.' 'What spooked you? Just being seen publicly with me like this?' Yes. Having him kiss her and realising that soon she'd have to return to the world humming around them, and leave the House, and she didn't know what she would do then. What it would mean for them. If she would plunge back into that dark place she'd occupied before. Drag him down with her. 'Nesta. Talk to me.' She met his stare, but wouldn't open her mouth. Cassian's eyes blazed. 'Say it.' She refused. 'Say it, Nesta.' 'I don't know what you're talking about.' 'Ask me why I vanished for nearly a week after Solstice. Why I suddenly had to do an inspection right after a holiday.' Nesta kept her mouth shut. 'It was because I woke up the next morning and all I wanted to do was fuck you for a week straight. And I knew what that meant, what had happened, even though you didn't, and I didn't want to scare you. You weren't ready for the truth- not yet.' Her mouth went dry. 'Say it,' Cassian snarled. People gave them a wide berth. Some outright turned back toward the direction they'd come from. 'No.' His face shuttered with rage even as his voice became calm. 'Say it.' She couldn't. Not before he'd ordered her to, and certainly not now. She couldn't let him win like that. 'Say what I guessed from the moment we met,' he breathed. 'What I knew the first time I kissed you. What became unbreakable between us on Solstice night.' She wouldn't. 'I am your mate, for fuck's sake!' Cassian shouted, loud enough for people across the river to hear. 'You are my mate! Why are you still fighting it?' She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her. 'You promised me forever on Solstice,' he said, voice breaking. 'Why is one word somehow throwing you off that?' 'Because with that one word, the last scrap of my humanity goes away!' She didn't care who saw them, who heard. 'With that one stupid word, I am no longer human in any way. I'm one of you!' He blinked. 'I thought you wanted to be one of us.' 'I don't know what I want. I didn't have a choice.' 'Well, I didn't have a choice in being shackled to you, either.' The declaration slammed into her. Shackled. He sucked in a breath. 'That was an incredibly poor choice of words.' 'But the truth, right?' 'No, I was angry- it's not true.' 'Why? Your friends saw me for what I was. What I am. The mating bond made you stupidly blind to it. How many times did they warn you away from me, Cassian?' She barked a cold laugh. Shackled. Words beckoned, sharp as knives, begging for her to grab one and plunge it into his chest. Make him hurt as much as that one would hurt her. Make him bleed. But if she did that, if she ripped into him... She couldn't. Wouldn't let herself do it.

The day wore on.While yet Rycca slept, Dragon did all the things she had said he would do-paced back and forth, contemplated mayhem,and even honed his blade on the whetstone from the stable.All except being oblivious to her,for that he could never manage. But when she awoke,sitting up heavy-lidded, her mouth so full and soft it was all he could do not to crawl back into bed with her,he put aside such pursuits and controlled himself admirably well,so he thought. Yet in the midst of preparing a meal for them from the provisions in the pantry of the lodge,he was stopped by Rycca's hand settling upon his. "Dragon," she said softly, "if you add any more salt to that stew, we will need a barrel of water and more to drink with it." He looked down, saw that she was right, and cursed under his breath. Dumping out the spoiled stew, he started over. They ate late but they did eat.He was quite determined she would do so,and for once she seemed to have a decent appetite. "I'm glad to see your stomach is better," he said as she was finishing. She looked up,startled. "What makes you say that?" "You haven't seemed able to eat regularly of late." "Oh,well,you know...so many changes...travel...all that." He nodded,reached for his goblet, and damn near knocked it over as a sudden thought roared through him. "Rycca?" She rose quickly,gathering up the dishes. His hand lashed out, closing on her wrist. Gently but inexorably, he returned her to her seat. Without taking his eyes from her,he asked, "Is there something you should tell me?" "Something...?" "I ask myself what sort of changes may cause a woman to be afflicted with an uneasy stomach and it occurs to me I've been a damned idiot." "Not so! You could never be that." "Oh,really? How otherwise would I fail to notice that your courses have not come of late? Or is that also due to travel,wife?" "Some women are not all that regular." "Some women do not concern me.You do,Rycca. I swear,if you are with child and have not told me, I will-" She squared her shoulders,lifted her head,and met his eyes hard on. "Will what?" "What? Will what? Does that mean-" "I'm sorry,Dragon." Truly repentant, Rycca sighed deeply. "I was going to tell you.I was just waiting for a calmer time.I didn't want you to worry more." Still grappling with what she had just revealed,he stared at her in astonishment. "You mean worry that my wife and our child are bait for a murderous traitor?" "I know you're angry and you have a right to be.But if I had told you, we wouldn't be here now." "Damn right we wouldn't be!" He got up from the table so abruptly that his chair toppled over and crashed to the floor.Ignoring it,Dragon paced back and forth,glaring at her. Rycca waited,trusting the storm to pass. As she did,she counted silently, curious to see just how long it would take her husband to grasp fully what he had discovered. Nine...ten... "We're going to have a baby." Not long at all. She nodded happily. "Yes,we are, and you're going to be a wonderful father." He walked back to the table,picked her up out of her chair,held her high against his chest,and stared at her. "My God-" Rycca laughed. "You can't possibly be surprised.It's not as though we haven't been doing our best to make this happen." "True,but still it's absolutely incredible." Very gently,she touched his face. "Perhaps we think of miracles wrongly. They're supposed to be extraordinarily rare but in fact they're as commonplace as a bouquet of wildflowers plucked by a warrior...or a woman having a baby." Dragon sat down with her still in his arms and held her very close.He swallowed several times and said nothing. Both could have remained contentedly like that for a long while, but only a few minutes passed before they were interrupted. The raven lit on the sill of the open window just long enough to catch their attention,then she was gone into the bloodred glare of the dying day.

her power now that she had lost the hair. So when the bride had finished drinking, and would have got upon Falada again, the maid said, "I shall ride upon Falada, and you may have my horse instead;" so she was forced to give up her horse, and soon afterwards to take off her royal clothes, and put on her maid's shabby ones. At last, as they drew near the end of the journey, this treacherous servant threatened to kill her mistress if she ever told anyone what had happened. But Falada saw it all, and marked it well. Then the waiting-maid got upon Falada, and the real bride was set upon the other horse, and they went on in this way till at last they came to the royal court. There was great joy at their coming, and the prince hurried to meet them, and lifted the maid from her horse, thinking she was the one who was to be his wife; and she was led upstairs to the royal chamber, but the true princess was told to stay in the court below. However, the old king happened to be looking out of the window, and saw her in the yard below; and as she looked very pretty, and too delicate for a waiting-maid, he went into the royal chamber to ask the bride whom it was she had brought with her, that was thus left standing in the court below. "I brought her with me for the sake of her company on the road," said she. "Pray give the girl some work to do, that she may not be idle." The old king could not for some time think of any work for her, but at last he said, "I have a lad who takes care of my geese; she may go and help him." Now the name of this lad, that the real bride was to help in watching the king's geese, was Curdken. Soon after, the false bride said to the prince, "Dear husband, pray do me one piece of kindness." "That I will," said the prince. "Then tell one of your slaughterers to cut off the head of the horse I rode upon, for it was very unruly, and plagued me sadly on the road." But the truth was, she was very much afraid lest Falada should speak, and tell all she had done to the princess. She carried her point, and the faithful Falada was killed; but when the true princess heard of it she wept, and begged the man to nail up Falada's head against a large dark gate in the city through which she had to pass every morning and evening, that there she might still see him sometimes. Then the slaughterer said he would do as she wished, so he cut off the head and nailed it fast under the dark gate. Early the next morning, as the princess and Curdken went out through the gate, she said sorrowfully— "Falada, Falada, there thou art hanging!" and the head answered— "Bride, bride, there thou are ganging! Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it, Sadly, sadly her heart would rue it." Then they went out of the city, driving the geese. And when they came to the meadow, the princess sat down upon a bank there and let down her waving locks of hair, which were all of pure gold; and when Curdken saw it glitter in the sun, he ran up, and would have pulled some of the locks out; but she cried— "Blow, breezes, blow! Let Curdken's hat go! Blow breezes, blow! Let him after it go! "O'er hills, dales, and rocks, Away be it whirl'd, Till the golden locks Are all comb'd and curl'd!" Then there came a wind, so strong that it blew off Curdken's hat, and away it flew over the hills, and he after it; till, by the time he came back, she had done combing and curling her hair, and put it up again safely. Then he was very angry and sulky, and would not speak to her at all; but they watched the geese until it grew dark in the evening, and then drove them homewards. The next morning, as they were going through the dark gate, the poor girl looked up at Falada's head, and cried— "Falada, Falada, there thou art hanging!" and it answered— "Bride, bride, there thou are ganging! Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it, Sadly, sadly her heart would rue it." Then she drove on the geese and sat down again in the meadow, and began to comb

He concluded the speech with an irritated motion of his hands. Unfortunately, Evie had been conditioned by too many encounters with Uncle Peregrine to discern between angry gestures and the beginnings of a physical attack. She flinched instinctively, her own arms flying up to shield her head. When the expected pain of a blow did not come, she let out a breath and tentatively lowered her arms to find Sebastian staring at her with blank astonishment. Then his face went dark. “Evie,” he said, his voice containing a bladelike ferocity that frightened her. “Did you think I was about to…Christ. Someone hit you. Someone hit you in the past—who the hell was it?” He reached for her suddenly—too suddenly—and she stumbled backward, coming up hard against the wall. Sebastian went very still. “Goddamn,” he whispered. Appearing to struggle with some powerful emotion, he stared at her intently. After a long moment, he spoke softly. “I would never strike a woman. I would never harm you. You know that, don’t you?” Transfixed by the light, glittering eyes that held hers with such intensity, Evie couldn’t move or make a sound. She started as he approached her slowly. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Let me come to you. It’s all right. Easy.” One of his arms slid around her, while he used his free hand to smooth her hair, and then she was breathing, sighing, as relief flowed through her. Sebastian brought her closer against him, his mouth brushing her temple. “Who was it?” he asked. “M-my uncle,” she managed to say. The motion of his hand on her back paused as he heard her stammer. “Maybrick?” he asked patiently. “No, th-the other one.” “Stubbins.” “Yes.” Evie closed her eyes in pleasure as his other arm slid around her. Clasped against Sebastian’s hard chest, with her cheek tucked against his shoulder, she inhaled the scent of clean male skin, and the subtle touch of sandalwood cologne. “How often?” she heard him ask. “More than once?” “I…i-it’s not important now.” “How often, Evie?” Realizing that he was going to persist until she answered, Evie muttered, “Not t-terribly often, but…sometimes when I displeased him, or Aunt Fl-Florence, he would lose his temper. The l-last time I tr-tried to run away, he blackened my eye and spl-split my lip.” “Did he?” Sebastian was silent for a long moment, and then he spoke with chilling softness. “I’m going to tear him limb from limb.” “I don’t want that,” Evie said earnestly. “I-I just want to be safe from him. From all of them.” Sebastian drew his head back to look down into her flushed face. “You are safe,” he said in a low voice. He lifted one of his hands to her face, caressing the plane of her cheekbone, letting his fingertip follow the trail of pale golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. As her lashes fluttered downward, he stroked the slender arcs of her brows, and cradled the side of her face in his palm. “Evie,” he murmured. “I swear on my life, you will never feel pain from my hands. I may prove a devil of a husband in every other regard…but I wouldn’t hurt you that way. You must believe that.

A rattle of dishes warned of a servant’s entry into the hall, but Christopher was incensed, and half turning with a growl, he gestured Paine back. “Get out of here, man!” “Christopher!” Erienne gasped and took two halting steps to follow the befuddled servant, but Christopher came around to face her with a glare. “Stay where you are, madam! I am not finished with you.” “You have no right to give orders here,” she protested, her own ire growing. “This is my husband’s house!” “I’ll give orders when and where I damn well please, and for once, you will stand and listen until I’m through!” More than a trifle outraged herself, Erienne hurled back her answer. “You may command the men on your ship to your will, Mister Seton, but you have no such authority here! Good day to you!” Catching up her skirts, she whirled and stalked toward the tower until she heard the sound of rapid footsteps coming behind her, then a sudden panic seized her that he would make such a scene that she would not be able to face the servants… or her husband. She raced into the entry, stepping over the puddle, and took to the stairs, forcing every bit of strength she could into her limbs. She had barely gained the fourth step when she heard sliding feet, a loud thump, and then a painful grunt followed by an angry curse. When she whirled, Christopher was just coming to rest in a heap against the wall after sliding across the floor, partway on his back. For a moment she stared aghast at the dignified man sprawled in a most undignified manner, but when he raised his head to look at her with barely contained rage, she was struck by the humor of it all. Bubbling laughter broke forth, winning from him a dark scowl of exasperation. “Are you hurt, Christopher?” she asked sweetly. “Aye! My pride has been mightily bruised!” “Oh, that will mend, sir,” she chuckled, spreading her skirts to perch primly on the step above him. Her eyes danced with a lively light that was simply dazzling to behold. “But you should take care. If such a modest spot of water can bring you down so abruptly, I would not advise sailing beyond these shores.” “ ’Tis not a spot of water that’s brought me down, but a waspish wench who sets her barbs against me at every turn.” “You dare accuse me when you come in here huffing and snorting like a raging bull?” She gave a throaty, skeptical laugh. “Really, Christopher, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You frightened Paine and nearly made me swallow my heart.” “That’s an impossibility, madam, for that thing is surely made of cold, hard steel.” “You’re pouting,” she chided flippantly, “because I have not fallen swooning at your feet.” “I’m angry because you continually deny the fact that you should be my wife!” he stated emphatically. Footsteps on the stairs behind Erienne made them glance up. Aggie came nonchalantly down the steps, seeming unaware of Christopher’s storm-dark frown. Excusing herself, she stepped past her mistress. Finally, on reaching level footing, she contemplated the man, a twinkle of mischief in her eye. “Aren’t ye a wee bit old ter be takin’ yer leisure on the floor, sir?” He raised a brow at Erienne as that one smothered a giggle, and with a snort, got to his feet and brushed off his breeches and coatsleeve. -Christopher, Erienne, and Aggie

God spoke through the prophet Isaiah and said in Isaiah 54:4-10 (NLT) 4 “Fear not; you will no longer live in shame. Don’t be afraid; there is no more disgrace for you. You will no longer remember the shame of your youth and the sorrows of widowhood. 5 For your Creator will be your husband; the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name! He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of all the earth. 6 For the Lord has called you back from your grief— as though you were a young wife abandoned by her husband,” says your God. 7 “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will take you back. 8 In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. 9 “Just as I swore in the time of Noah that I would never again let a flood cover the earth, so now I swear that I will never again be angry and punish you. 10 For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,” says the Lord, who has mercy on you.

A lady told me about one of her husband’s relatives who was very opinionated. He was always making these cutting, demeaning remarks about her. This couple hadn’t been married that long. Every time they went to family get-togethers, this relative would say something to offend her. She would get all upset and it would ruin the day. She reached the point where she refused to even go to family events. Finally, she told her husband, “You’ve got to do something about that man. He’s your relative.” She was expecting her husband to say, “You’re right, honey. He shouldn’t talk to you like that. I will set him straight.” But the husband did just the opposite. He said, “Honey, I love you but I cannot control him. He has every right to have his opinion. He can say what he wants to, but you have every right to not get offended.” At first she couldn’t understand why her husband wouldn’t really stick up for her. Time and time again she would become upset. If this relative was in one room she would go to another. If he went outside she would make sure she stayed inside. She was always focused on avoiding this man. One day she realized she was giving away her power. It was like a light turned on in her mind. She was allowing one person with issues to keep her from becoming who she was meant to be. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. When you say, “You make me so mad,” what you’re really doing is admitting that you’re giving away your power. As long as that person knows they can push this button and you’ll respond this way, you are giving them exactly what they want. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. People have a right to say what they want, to do what they want, as long as it’s legal. But we have a right to not get offended. We have a right to overlook it. But when we get upset and go around angry, we change. What’s happening is we’re putting too much importance on what they think about us. What they say about you does not define who you are. Their opinion of you does not determine your self-worth. Let that bounce off of you like water off of a duck’s back. They have every right to have their opinion, and you have every right to ignore it.

I’ve always been disturbed by confrontation and conflict, even when I’m only a bystander. By default, Sang is in charge of Confrontation With Others. If something needs to be argued over or complained about—a botched repair job or an over-cooked restaurant meal—that’s his department. While he’s making that phone call or waiting for the manager to appear, I go off and hide. As an adult, I’m not proud of this. Why do I desperately need to flee a situation where I’m nothing more than an observer? Because, I’ve realized, I don’t discriminate between anger that is aimed at me and anger in general. When someone is angry, I invariably feel like I’m the cause or the target, even when I rationally know that I’m not. If Sang calls me when he’s having a bad day, I hear how upset he is and immediately feel distressed. Not distressed as in, “I should console my husband because he’s had a bad day.” I feel distressed in a “this is incredibly stressful and I want it to stop” kind of way. When confronted with emotional upset, my brain immediately goes into “fix it” mode, searching for a way to make the other person feel better so I can also relieve my own distress.

Mandana Misra was a great scholar and authority on the Vedas and Mimasa. He led a householder’s life (grihastha), with his scholar-philosopher wife, Ubhaya Bharati, in the town of Mahishi, in what is present-day northern Bihar. Husband and wife would have great debates on the veracity of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and other philosophical works. Scholars from all over Bharatavarsha came to debate and understand the Shastras with them. It is said that even the parrots in Mandana’s home debated the divinity, or its lack, in the Vedas and Upanishads. Mandana was a staunch believer in rituals. One day, while he was performing Pitru Karma (rituals for deceased ancestors), Adi Shankaracharya arrived at his home and demanded a debate on Advaita. Mandana was angry at the rude intrusion and asked the Acharya whether he was not aware, as a Brahmin, that it was inauspicious to come to another Brahmin’s home uninvited when Pitru Karma was being done? In reply, Adi Shankara asked Mandana whether he was sure of the value of such rituals. This enraged Mandana and the other Brahmins present. Thus began one of the most celebrated debates in Hindu thought. It raged for weeks between the two great scholars. As the only other person of equal intellect to Shankara and Mandana was Mandana’s wife, Ubhaya Bharati, she was appointed the adjudicator. Among other things, Shankara convinced Mandana that the rituals for the dead had little value to the dead. Mandana became Adi Shankara’s disciple (and later the first Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math in Karnataka). When the priest related this story to me, I was shocked. He was not giving me the answer I had expected. Annoyed, I asked him what he meant by the story if Adi Shankara himself said such rituals were of no use to the dead. The priest replied, “Son, the story has not ended.” And he continued... A few years later, Adi Shankara was compiling the rituals for the dead, to standardize them for people across Bharatavarsha. Mandana, upset with his Guru’s action, asked Adi Shankara why he was involved with such a useless thing. After all, the Guru had convinced him of the uselessness of such rituals (Lord Krishna also mentions the inferiority of Vedic sacrifice to other paths, in the Gita. Pitru karma has no vedic base either). Why then was the Jagad Guru taking such a retrograde step? Adi Shankaracharya smiled at his disciple and answered, “The rituals are not for the dead but for the loved ones left behind.

Anger is stereotypically normal for men because they are supposed to be aggressors. Women are supposed to be victims, and good victims shouldn’t become angry; they’re supposed to be afraid. Women are punished for expressing anger—they lose respect, pay, and perhaps even their jobs. Whenever I see a savvy male politician play the “angry bitch card” against a female opponent, I take it as an ironic sign that she must be really competent and powerful. (I have yet to meet a successful woman who hasn’t paid her dues as a “bitch” before she was accepted as a leader.)20 In courtrooms, angry women like Ms. Norman lose their liberty. In fact, in domestic violence cases, men who kill get shorter and lighter sentences, and are charged with less serious crimes, than are women who kill their intimate partners. A murderous husband is just acting like a stereotypical husband, but wives who kill are not acting like typical wives, and therefore they are rarely exonerated.21 Emotion stereotyping is even worse when the female victim of domestic violence is African American. The archetypal victim in American culture is fearful, passive, and helpless, but in African American communities, women sometimes violate this stereotype by defending themselves vigorously against their alleged batterers.

I am your wife, but I will do as I please, I raged, and the spell rose in my head without effort. Belt that holds my husband’s pants, Loosen now and make him dance. Tiras’s belt flew from his breeches like a sea serpent, slithering through the air only to strike at him with its tail. He stepped back from me, his eyes growing wide as he gripped the gyrating length of leather, holding it at arm’s length with one hand as he held up his pants with the other. But I wasn’t finished. Boots upon my husband’s feet, Kick him so he’ll take a seat. Tiras fell flat on his behind as his boots shimmied and wriggled free, throwing him off balance. His boots then proceeded to kick him on his back and his thighs as he yowled in stunned outrage. “Lark!” Shirt upon my husband’s chest, Wrap yourself around his head. His tunic promptly rose like Tiras was shrugging it off, only it wrapped itself around him, obscuring his angry face. I started to laugh then. I couldn’t help it. He looked so ridiculous sitting on the floor of the library, his socks hanging from his feet, his breeches falling around his hips, his shirt over his head, and his boots and belt attacking him. Tiras lashed out and grabbed my skirts, yanking me down beside him. “Call off the hounds, Lark!” he bellowed, and I laughed even harder, shaking with mirth even as he rolled himself on top of me and valiantly fought the tunic that kept wrapping itself around his face. The tunic was slightly dangerous, the boots weren’t very accurate, and the tail end of the belt had made a welt across my cheek. I decided enough was enough. I performed a sloppy rhyme, and Tiras let out a stream of profanities as the shirt ceased its murderous attempts and the belt and boots fell to the floor, inanimate once again. Tiras’s breathing was harsh and fast, his hair mussed and falling over his eyes as he braced his forearms on either side of my head. His big body pressed me into the floor, making it hard to draw breath. I was well and truly trapped, but I felt like the victor regardless. Are you injured, husband? He was glaring and angry for all of three seconds. Then the lines around his eyes deepened and a smile broke out across his face. He laughed with me, but he kept me pinned beneath him, his face inches from mine. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Immensely. “Tell me this, wife. Is there a spell to quickly remove your dress?” he whispered, still smiling, his breath tickling my mouth. I felt my face grow hot, and I closed my eyes, trying to retreat, even as I immediately considered a spell to render us both naked.

We walk around inside that house like everything is okay, but it’s not, Quinn. We’ve been broken for years and I have no idea how to fix us. I find solutions. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. But I have no idea how to solve me and you. Every day I come home, hoping things will be better. But you can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. You hate it when I touch you. You hate it when I talk to you. I pretend not to notice the things you don’t want me to notice because I don’t want you to hurt more than you already do.” He releases a rush of air. “I am not blaming you for what I did. It’s my fault. I did that. I fucked up. But I didn’t fuck up because I was attracted to her. I fucked up because I miss you. Every day, I miss you. When I’m at work, I miss you. When I’m home, I miss you. When you’re next to me in bed, I miss you. When I’m inside you, I miss you.” Graham presses his mouth to mine. I can taste his tears. Or maybe they’re my tears. He pulls back and presses his forehead to mine. “I miss you, Quinn. So much. You’re right here, but you aren’t. I don’t know where you went or when you left, but I have no idea how to bring you back. I am so alone. We live together. We eat together. We sleep together. But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.” Graham releases me and falls back against his seat. He rests his elbow against the window, covering his face as he tries to compose himself. He’s more broken than I’ve ever seen him in all the years I’ve known him. And I’m the one slowly tearing him down. I’m making him unrecognizable. I’ve strung him along by allowing him to believe there’s hope that I’ll eventually change. That I’ll miraculously turn back into the woman he fell in love with. But I can’t change. We are who our circumstances turn us into. “Graham.” I wipe at my face with my shirt. He’s quiet, but he eventually looks at me with his sad, heartbroken eyes. “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been here this whole time. But you can’t see me because you’re still searching for someone I used to be. I’m sorry I’m no longer who I was back then. Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe I won’t. But a good husband loves his wife through the good and the bad times. A good husband stands at his wife’s side through sickness and health, Graham. A good husband- a husband who truly loves his wife - wouldn’t cheat on her and then blame his infidelity on the fact that he’s lonely.” Graham’s expression doesn’t change. He’s as still as a statue. The only thing that moves is his jaw as he works it back and forth. And then his eyes narrow and he tilts his head. “You don’t think I love you, Quinn?” “I know you used to. But I don’t think you love the person I’ve become.” Graham sits up straight. He leans forward, looking me hard in the eye. His words are clipped as he speaks. “I have loved you every single second of every day since the moment I laid eyes on you. I love you more now than I did the day I married you. I love you, Quinn. I fucking love you!” He opens his car door, gets out and then slams it shut with all his strength. The whole car shakes. He walks toward the house, but before he makes it to the front door, he spins around and points at me angrily. “I love you, Quinn!” He’s shouting the words. He’s angry. So angry. He walks toward his car and kicks at the front bumper with his bare foot. He kicks and he kicks and he kicks and then pauses to scream it at me again. “I love you!” He slams his fist against the top of his car, over and over, until he finally collapses against the hood, his head buried in his arms. He remains in this position for an entire minute, the only thing moving is the subtle shaking of his shoulders. I don’t move. I don’t even think I breathe. Graham finally pushes off the hood and uses his shirt to wipe at his eyes. He looks at me, completely defeated. “I love you,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I always have. No matter how much you wish I didn’t.

The painting did not exist until I made it,' Karabekian went on. 'Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find. 'I now give you my world of honor,' he went on, 'that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal - the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us - in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery. 'I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Sheperdstown. Very well - let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light.

Hello, darling,” Alessandro smiled at her. Oh, that smile. Bree wanted to close her eyes, press her hands against her eyes and keep them shut forever so she wouldn’t see that smile. She must have had the question on her face, the knowledge on her face because as she looked at him now, something flickered in his eyes. Guilt. Oh God. “Mommy, look. I make good bouncies. See?” Will said, dribbling the ball. “I gonna be a basset ball player when I gwoed up.” The little boy’s voice sounded far away as Bree narrowed in on Alessandro and the look in his eyes. “Brian. I want you and Vanessa to take Will and Gianni out for a little while.” “Oh but we’re having a good time out here, aren’t we Gianni?” Alessandro asked, tickling Gianni who squealed and curled inward. “Now,” Bree said, her voice tight. Will stopped bouncing the ball and held it against his chest looking at both of them, picking up on the angry tension that suddenly covered them all. “Uh oh. I tink mommy’s mad.” “I’m not leaving you alone in your condition, Bree. Alessandro, we just came from the hospital. Colin’s awake,” Brian informed him, his voice tight with anger. “You spoke to Colin?” Alessandro asked, meeting Bree’s eyes. “I did. And Carrie.” He looks like a cornered animal. And what do Dardanos do when they’re cornered? They lie. They cheat. Oh God. “Fine, then can you just take the boys upstairs?” Bree said, speaking to Brian, but not moving her gaze from her husband. “Come on, guys. Let’s go play upstairs for a while,” Vanessa said walking past Bree and taking Gianni from Alessandro’s lap.

They won’t do it, Ian,” Jordan Townsende said the night after Ian was released on his own recognizance. Pacing back and forth across Ian’s drawing room, he said again, “They will not do it.” “They’ll do it,” Ian said dispassionately. The words were devoid of concern; not even his eyes showed interest. Days ago Ian had passed the point of caring about the investigation. Elizabeth was gone; there had been no ransom note, nothing whatever-no reason in the world to continue believing that she’d been taken against her will. Since Ian knew damned well he hadn’t killed her or had her abducted, the only remaining conclusion was that Elizabeth had left him for someone else. The authorities were still vacillating about the other man she’d allegedly met in the arbor because the gardener’s eyesight had been proven to be extremely poor, and even he admitted that it “might have been tree limbs moving around her in the dim light, instead of a man’s arms.” Ian, however, did not doubt it. The existence of a lover was the only thing that made sense; he had even suspected it the night before she disappeared. She hadn’t wanted him in her bed; if anything but a lover had been worrying her that night, she’d have sought the protection of his arms, even if she didn’t confide in him. But he had been the last thing she’d wanted. No, he hadn’t actually suspected it-that would have been more pain than he could have endured then. Now, however, he not only suspected it, he knew it, and the pain was beyond anything he’d ever imagined existed. “I tell you they won’t bring you to trial,” Jordan repeated. “Do you honestly think they will?” he demanded, looking first to Duncan and then to the Duke of Stanhope, who were seated in the drawing room. In answer, both men raised dazed, pain-filled eyes to Jordan’s, shook their heads in an effort to seem decisive, then looked back down at their hands. Under English law Ian was entitled to a trial before his peers; since he was a British lord, that meant he could only be tried in the House of Lords, and Jordan was clinging to that as if it were Ian’s lifeline. “You aren’t the first man among us to have a spoiled wife turn missish on him and vanish for a while in hopes of bringing him to heel,” Jordan continued, desperately trying to make it seem as if Elizabeth were merely sulking somewhere-no doubt unaware that her husband’s reputation had been demolished and that his very life was going to be in jeopardy. “They aren’t going to convene the whole damn House of Lords just to try a beleaguered husband whose wife has taken a start,” he continued fiercely. “Hell, half the lords in the House can’t control their wives. Why should you be any different?” Alexandra looked up at him, her eyes filled with misery and disbelief. Like Ian, she knew Elizabeth wasn’t indulging in a fit of the sullens. Unlike Ian, however, she could not and would not believe her friend had taken a lover and run away. Ian’s butler appeared in the doorway, a sealed message in his hand, which he handed to Jordan. “Who knows?” Jordan tried to joke as he opened it. “Maybe this is from Elizabeth-a note asking me to intercede with you before she dares present herself to you.” His smile faded abruptly. “What is it?” Alex cried, seeing his haggard expression. Jordan crumpled the summons in his hand and turned to Ian with angry regret. “They’re convening the House of Lords.” “It’s good to know,” Ian said with cold indifference as he pushed out of his chair and started for his study, “that I’ll have one friend and one relative there.

Lady Thornton,” Sutherland said in an awful, silky voice that made Elizabeth shake inside, “does the word ‘perjury’ have any meaning to you?” “I believe,” Elizabeth said, “it means to tell a lie in a place like this.” “Do you know how the Crown punishes perjurers? They are sentenced to gaol, and they live their lives in a dark, dank cell. Would you want that to happen to you?” “It certainly doesn’t sound very agreeable,” Elizabeth said. “Would I be able to take my jewels and gowns?” Shouts of laughter shook the chandeliers that hung from the vaulted ceilings. “No, you would not!” “Then I’m certainly happy I haven’t lied.” Sutherland was no longer certain whether he’d been duped, but he sensed that he’d lost his effort to make Elizabeth sound like a clever, scheming adulteress or a terrified, intimidated wife. The bizarre story of her flight with her brother had now taken on a certain absurd credibility, and he realized it with a sinking heart and a furious glower. “Madam, would you perjure yourself to protect that man?” His arm swung toward Ian, and Elizabeth’s gaze followed helplessly. Her heart froze with terror when she saw that, if anything, Ian looked more bored, more coldly remote and unmoved than he had before. “I asked you,” Sutherland boomed, “if you would perjure yourself to save that man from going to the gallows next month.” Elizabeth would have died to save him. Tearing her gaze from Ian’s terrifying face, she pinned a blank smile on her face. “Next month? What a disagreeable thing to suggest! Why, next month is-is Lady Northam’s ball, and Kensington very specifically promised that we would go”-thunderous guffaws exploded, rocking the rafters, drowning out Elizabeth’s last words-“and that I could have a new fur!!” Elizabeth waited, sensing that she had succeeded, not because her performance had been so convincing, but because many of the lords and wives who never thought beyond the next gown or ball or fur, and so she seemed entirely believable to them. “No further questions!” Sutherland rapped out, casting a contemptuous glance over her. Peterson Delham slowly arose, and though his expression was carefully blank, even bemused, Elizabeth sensed rather than saw that he was silently applauding her. “Lady Thornton,” he said in formal tones, “is there anything else you have to say to this court?” She realized that he wanted her to say something else, and in her state of relieved exhaustion Elizabeth couldn’t think what it was. She said the only thing she could think of, and she knew soon after she began speaking that he was pleased. “Yes, my lord. I wish to say how very sorry I am for the bother Bobby and I have caused everyone. I was wrong to believe him and to dash off without a word to anyone. And it was wrong of him to remain so angry with my husband all this time over what was, after all, rather an act of kindness on his part.” She sensed that she was going too far, sounding too sensible, and she hastily added, “If Kensington had had Bobby tossed into gaol for trying to shoot him, I daresay Bobby would have found it nearly as disagreeable a place as I. He is,” she confided, “a very fastidious person!” “Lady Thornton!” the Lord Chancellor said when the fresh waves of laughter had diminished to ripples. “You may step down.” At the scathing tone in his voice, Elizabeth dared a look in his direction, and then she almost missed her step when she saw the furious scorn on his face. The other lords might think her an incorrigible henwit, but the Lord Chancellor looked as if he would personally have enjoyed throttling her.

For a brief moment she considered the unfairness of it all. How short was the time for fun, for pretty clothes, for dancing, for coquetting! Only a few, too few years! Then you married and wore dull-colored dresses and had babies that ruined your waist line and sat in corners at dances with other sober matrons and only emerged to dance with your husband or with old gentlemen who stepped on your feet. If you didn't do these things, the other matrons talked about you and then your reputation was ruined and your family disgraced. It seemed such a terrible waste to spend all your little girlhood learning how to be attractive and how to catch men and then only use the knowledge for a year or two. When she considered her training at the hands of Ellen and Mammy, se knew it had been thorough and good because it had always reaped results. There were set rules to be followed, and if you followed them success crowned your efforts. With old ladies you were sweet and guileless and appeared as simple minded as possible, for old ladies were sharp and they watched girls as jealously as cats, ready to pounce on any indiscretion of tongue or eye. With old gentlemen, a girl was pert and saucy and almost, but not quite, flirtatious, so that the old fools' vanities would be tickled. It made them feel devilish and young and they pinched your cheek and declared you were a minx. And, of course, you always blushed on such occasions, otherwise they would pinch you with more pleasure than was proper and then tell their sons that you were fast. With young girls and young married women, you slopped over with sugar and kissed them every time you met them, even if it was ten times a day. And you put your arms about their waists and suffered them to do the same to you, no matter how much you disliked it. You admired their frocks or their babies indiscriminately and teased about beaux and complimented husbands and giggled modestly and denied you had any charms at all compared with theirs. And, above all, you never said what you really thought about anything, any more than they said what they really thought. Other women's husbands you let severely alone, even if they were your own discarded beaux, and no matter how temptingly attractive they were. If you were too nice to young husbands, their wives said you were fast and you got a bad reputation and never caught any beaux of your own. But with young bachelors-ah, that was a different matter! You could laugh softly at them and when they came flying to see why you laughed, you could refuse to tell them and laugh harder and keep them around indefinitely trying to find out. You could promise, with your eyes, any number of exciting things that would make a man maneuver to get you alone. And, having gotten you alone, you could be very, very hurt or very, very angry when he tried to kiss you. You could make him apologize for being a cur and forgive him so sweetly that he would hang around trying to kiss you a second time. Sometimes, but not often, you did let them kiss you. (Ellen and Mammy had not taught her that but she learned it was effective). Then you cried and declared you didn't know what had come over you and that he couldn't ever respect you again. Then he had to dry your eyes and usually he proposed, to show just how much he did respect you. And there were-Oh, there were so many things to do to bachelors and she knew them all, the nuance of the sidelong glance, the half-smile behind the fan, the swaying of hips so that skirts swung like a bell, the tears, the laughter, the flattery, the sweet sympathy. Oh, all the tricks that never failed to work-except with Ashley.

Tatiasha, I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I said those heartless things. I didn’t mean them.” He held her stomach into him. “You meant them,” Tatiana said emptily. “You’re a soldier. You meant them all.” “No, Tania,” Alexander said, hating himself. “I didn’t. I’m your husband first.” He held her close. “Feel me, Tania, feel my body, feel my hands, my lips on you, feel my heart. I didn’t mean them.” “Shura, I wish you would stop saying things you don’t mean.” He breathed in her smells, rubbing his face in her hair. “I know. I’m sorry.” She didn’t reply, but her hand remained on his. “Turn to me?” he asked, pulling himself away. “No.” “Please. Turn to me, and tell me you forgive me.” Tatiana turned, lifting her swollen eyes to Alexander. “Oh, honey…” He paused, closing his eyes. He could not endure her expression. “Breathe on me,” he whispered. “I want to smell your blueberry breath on my face.” She did. Alexander inhaled the warm spirit out of her lungs into his mouth and into his lungs. He hugged her. “Please tell me you forgive me, Tania.” “I forgive you.” Her voice was flat. “Kiss me. I want to feel your lips forgive me.” She kissed him. He watched her close her eyes. “You have not forgiven me. Again.” Tatiana kissed him again softly. She kissed him, and then her mouth parted, and she made a small forgiving moaning sound. Her hands drifted down to take hold of him. Quietly she caressed him and caressed him. And caressed him. “Thank you,” Alexander said, gazing at her. “Say to me, Shura, I know you didn’t mean it. You were just angry.” Sighing, she said, “I know you didn’t mean it.” “Say to me, I know you love me to insanity.” “I know you love me.” “No, Tania,” he said, raw emotion in his voice. “I love you to insanity.” He ran his lips back and forth against her silken eyebrows, unable to breathe, afraid he would exhale her breath out of him.

Questioner: In the tradition, we were always taught to be reverential towards God or the highest aspect. So how to reconcile this with Mirabai or Akka Mahadevi who took God as their lover? Sadhguru: Where there is no love, how can reverence come? When love reaches its peak, it naturally becomes reverence. People who are talking about reverence without love know neither this nor that. All they know is fear. So probably you are referring to God-fearing people. These sages and saints, especially the seers like Akka Mahadevi, Mirabai or Anusuya and so many of them in the past, have taken to this form of worship because it was more suitable for them – they could emote much more easily than they could intellectualize things. They just used their emotions to reach their Ultimate nature. Using emotion and reaching the Ultimate nature is what is called bhakti yoga. In every culture, there are different forms of worship. Some people worship God as the master and themselves as the slaves. Sometimes they even take God as their servant or as a partner in everything that they do. Yet others worship him as a friend, as a lover, or as their own child like Balakrishna. Generally, you become the feminine and you hold him as the ultimate purusha – masculine. How you worship is not at all the point; the whole point is just how deeply you relate. These are the different attitudes, but whatever the attitude, the love affair is such that you are not expecting anything from the other side. Not even a response. You crave for it. But if there is no response, you are not going to be angry, you are not going to be disappointed – nothing. Your life is just to crave and make something else tremendously more important than yourself. That is the fundamental thing. In the whole path of bhakti, the important thing is just this, that something else is far more important than you. So Akka, Mirabai and others like them, their bhakti was in that form and they took this mode of worship where they worshipped God – whether Shiva or Krishna – as their husband. In India, when a woman comes to a certain age, marriage is almost like a must, and it anyway happens. They wanted to eliminate that dimension of being married once again to another man, so they chose the Lord himself as their husband so that they don’t need any other relationship in their lives. How a devotee relates to his object of devotion does not really matter because the purpose of the path of devotion is just dissolution. The only objective of a devotee is to dissolve into his object of devotion. Whichever way they could relate best, that is how they would do it. The reason why you asked this question in terms of reverence juxtaposed with being a lover or a husband is because the word “love” or “being a lover” is always understood as a physical aspect. That is why this question has come. How can you be physical with somebody and still be reverential? This has been the tragedy of humanity that lovers have not known how to be reverential to each other. In fact the very objective of love is to dissolve into someone else. If you look at love as an emotion, you can see that love is a vehicle to bring oneness. It is the longing to become one with the other which we are referring to as love. When it is taken to its peak, it is very natural to become reverential towards what you consider worthwhile being “one” with. For whatever sake, you are willing to dissolve yourself. It is natural to be reverential towards that. Otherwise how would you feel that it is worthwhile to dissolve into? If you think it is something you can use or something you can just relate to and be benefited by, there can be no love. Always, the object of love is to dissolve. So, whatever you consider is worthwhile to dissolve your own self into, you are bound to be reverential towards that; there is no other way to be.

Do you remember that I said I have something to show you?" Back when they were entering the house. Before she'd seen Hugh. Before their argument. "Yes?" He pushed open the door to her bedroom. "Look." She went inside and saw Valente sitting on the floor in front of her fireplace with a basket. He had a silly grin on his face. She glanced over her shoulder to Raphael. "What-?" Her husband tilted his chin toward Valente and the basket. "Go and see." At the same time she heard an animal whimper. Her lips parted and she picked up her skirts to hurry to the basket. It was lined with a soft blanket and inside was the sweetest little blond puppy, looking very sorry for itself. Iris stared, torn. Did Raphael think a 'puppy' would be an adequate substitution for him? The moment the puppy saw her it began whimpering and yipping, trying to climb from its wicker prison, but its legs were too short to make the attempt and it ended by falling backward, revealing that it was female. It was hardly the puppy's fault that she was angry with Raphael. "Oh," Iris breathed, sinking to her knees on the carpet opposite Valente. "She's perfect." Somehow the words made tears start in her eyes again. She picked up the puppy, which wriggled in Iris's hands until she held the small animal against her chest. The puppy promptly began licking Iris's chin with a tiny pink tongue. Iris looked up at Raphael through her tears. "What is her name?" He shook his head. "She has none that I know of. You must give her one." Iris stood, cradling the still-squirming puppy carefully, and went to her husband. "Thank you." She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips, trying to convey all she'd said before. All he'd pushed aside. 'Stay. Stay. Stay.' Raphael took her arms gently and kissed her, angling his face over hers. He embraced her as if she were a lifeline. As if he wished to remain with her forever. The puppy yelped and he took a step back, breaking the kiss. Drawing away from her without effort. He walked out of the bedroom. Iris closed her eyes to keep her sorrow and tears in. She kissed the top of the puppy's silky head and whispered in her ear, "Tansy.

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield. Let me refine that. He didn’t want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn’t imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor. That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn’t reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed. I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women’s Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn’t that selfish? What if that wasn’t God’s will? I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn’t exactly what I prayed for. Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris? Had my prayers even been heard? If it was God’s plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can’t say that I was. Right after he made his decision, I took a walk with a friend whose faith ran very deep. She knew the Bible much better than I did, and was far more active in the church. I cried to her. “I have to believe this is the best thing for our family,” I told her. “But I don’t know how it can be. I’m really struggling to accept it.” “It’s okay to be angry with God,” she told me. That caught me short. “I--I don’t think we’re supposed to be.” “Why not?” “Well…Jesus was never mad at God, and--“ “That’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t you remember in the temple with the money changers? Or in the garden before he was crucified, his doubts? Or on the cross? It’s okay to have those feelings.” We talked some more. “I do believe that if Chris dies,” I said finally, “God must be saying it’s still okay for our family, even if I don’t know how.” She teared up. “I’m in awe,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I could say that.

In other words, you'll pretend to be someone else in order to snag a husband." "Oh, for heaven's sake," she said defensively, "it's no different than what half the women in society do to catch a man. I don't want to waste my time in pointless flirtation when a little knowledge will improve my aim on the targets." He flashed her a condescending smile. "What is it?" she snapped. "Only you would approach courtship as a marksman approaches a shooting match." He licked the tip of his pencil. "So who are these hapless targets?" "The Earl of Devonmont, the Duke of Lyons, and Fernandez Valdez, the Viscount de Basto." His jaw dropped. "Are you insane?" "I know they're rather beyond my reach, but they seem to like my company-" "I daresay they do!" He strode up to her, strangely angry. "The earl is a rakehell with a notorious reputation for trying to get beneath the skirts of every woman he meets. The duke's father was mad, and it's said to run in his family, which is why most women steer clear of him. And Basto is a Portuguese idiot who's too old for you and clearly trawling for some sweet young thing to nurse him in his declining years." "How can you say such things? The only one you know personally is Lord Devonmont, and you barely know even him." "I don't have to. Their reputations tell me they're utterly unacceptable." Unacceptable? Three of the most eligible bachelors in London? Mr. Pinter was mad, not her. "Lord Devonmont is Gabe's wife's cousin. The duke of Gabe's best friend, whom I've known since childhood, and the viscount...well..." "Is an oily sort, from what I hear," he snapped. "No, he isn't. He's very pleasant to talk to." Really, this was the most ridiculous conversation. "Who the devil do you think I should marry, anyway?" That seemed to take him aback. He glanced away. "I don't know," he muttered. "But no...That is, you shouldn't..." He tugged at his cravat. "They're wrong for you, that's all." She'd flustered Mr. Pinter. How astonishing! He was never flustered. It made him look vulnerable and much less...stiff. She rather liked that. But she'd like it even better if she understood what had provoked it. "Why do you care whom I choose, as long as you're paid? I'm wiling to pay extra to ensure that you find out everything I want to know." Once more he turned into Proud Pinter. "It isn't a matter of payment, madam. I choose my own assignments, and this one isn't to my taste. Good day," Turning on his heel, he headed for the door. Oh, dear, she hadn't meant to run him off entirely.

Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. “Where is he?” he demanded without preamble. Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, “He’s gone.” “Why didn’t you follow him?” White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian’s eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw. Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner’s volcanic temper, remained unruffled. “It was unnecessary in my judgment,” he said. “He won’t return.” “I don’t pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard.” Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him— and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband’s head. “I want him found,” Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. “I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he’ll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife.” He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. “Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available— private ones. I don’t want some idiot from the New Police, who’ll foul this up as they do everything else. Go.” Though Cam undoubtedly had a few opinions to offer on the matter, he kept them to himself. “Yes, my lord.” He left the room at once, while Sebastian glared after him. Seeking to calm his seething temper, Evie ventured, “There is no need to take your anger out on Cam. He—” “Don’t even try to excuse him,” Sebastian said darkly. “You and I both know that he could have caught that damned gutter rat had he wanted to. And I’ll be damned if I’ll tolerate your calling him by his first name— he is not your brother, nor is he a friend. He’s an employee, and you’ll refer to him as ‘Mr. Rohan’ from now on.” “He is my friend,” Evie replied in outrage. “He has been for years!” “Married women don’t have friendships with young unmarried men.” “Y-you dare to insult my honor with the implication that… that…” Evie could hardly speak for the multitude of protests that jammed inside her. “I’ve done nothing to merit such a lack of tr-tr-trust!” “I trust you. It’s everyone else that I hold in suspicion.

He concluded the speech with an irritated motion of his hands. Unfortunately, Evie had been conditioned by too many encounters with Uncle Peregrine to discern between angry gestures and the beginnings of a physical attack. She flinched instinctively, her own arms flying up to shield her head. When the expected pain of a blow did not come, she let out a breath and tentatively lowered her arms to find Sebastian staring at her with blank astonishment. Then his face went dark. "Evie," he said, his voice containing a bladelike ferocity that frightened her. "Did you think I was about to... Christ. Someone hit you. Someone hit you in the past---who the hell was it?" He reached for her suddenly---too suddenly---and she stumbled backward, coming up hard against the wall. Sebastian went very still. "Goddamn," he whispered. Appearing to struggle with some powerful emotion, he stared at her intently. After a long moment, he spoke softly. "I would never strike a woman. I would never harm you. You know that, don't you?" Transfixed by the light, glittering eyes that held hers with such intensity, Evie couldn't move or make a sound. She started as he approached her slowly. "It's all right," he murmured. "Let me come to you. It's all right. Easy." One of his arms slid around her, while he used his free hand to smooth her hair, and then she was breathing, sighing, as relief flowed through her. Sebastian brought her closer against him, his mouth brushing her temple. "Who was it?" he asked. "M-my uncle," she managed to say. The motion of his hand on her back paused as he heard her stammer. "Maybrick?" he asked patiently. "No, th-the other one." "Stubbins." "Yes." Evie closed her eyes in pleasure as his other arm slid around her. Clasped against Sebastian's hard chest, with her cheek tucked against his shoulder, she inhaled the scent of clean male skin, and the subtle touch of sandalwood cologne. "How often?" she heard him ask. "More than once?" "I... i-it's not important now." "How often, Evie?" Realizing that he was going to persist until she answered, Evie muttered, "Not t-terribly often, but... sometimes when I displeased him, or Aunt Fl-Florence, he would lose his temper. The l-last time I tr-tried to run away, he blackened my eye and spl-split my lip." "Did he?" Sebastian was silent for a long moment, and then he spoke with chilling softness. "I'm going to tear him limb from limb." "I don't want that," Evie said earnestly. "I-I just want to be safe from him. From all of them." Sebastian drew his head back to look down into her flushed face. "You are safe," he said in a low voice. He lifted one of his hands to her face, caressing the plane of her cheekbone, letting his fingertip follow the trail of pale golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. As her lashes fluttered downward, he stroked the slender arcs of her brows, and cradled the side of her face with his palm. "Evie," he murmured. "I swear on my life, you will never feel pain from my hands. I may prove a devil of a husband in every other regard... but I wouldn't hurt you that way. You must believe that." The delicate nerves of her skin drank in sensations thirstily... his touch, the erotic waft of his breath against her lips. Evie was afraid to open her eyes, or to do anything that might interrupt the moment. "Yes," she managed to whisper. "Yes... I---" There was the sweet shock of a probing kiss against her lips... another... She opened to him with a slight gasp. His mouth was hot silk and tender fire, invading her with gently questing pressure. His fingertips traced over her face, tenderly adjusting the angle between them.