Betty Broderick Quotes

To me, what constitutes a family are those who you choose to make your family. Whether they’re related through bloodlines or only timelines, they’re the people

to this day, two trials later, Betty still frequently speaks of Dan Broderick, and sometimes Linda, as if they were still alive and well and tormenting her. "He's such a shit!" she exploded one day, nearly fifteen months later, after reciting some past example of his sins against her. "I'd like to kill him!" "But, Betty," her listener replied, "you did." Silence. Pause. Then a small, confused laugh. "Yeah, well … but I didn't get revenge ... he didn't suffer enough.

The combination of these things opened up the door for Linda, or someone like her, to come in. Dan was scared to death of growing up and turning forty. Peter Pan wanted to stay a young, carefree, party-boy forever, and maybe, too, he was finally cool enough to feel part of a fraternity, like the ones he hadn’t been a part of in College. Albeit his fraternity brothers were all middle-aged men with families of their own, but that’s just semantics. It’s the spirit, or in this case the spirits, of the thing that counts. We had four children and there I was, an ever-present figure expecting him to act his age and show responsibility, and I suppose from his point of view that was grinding. I’ve always said that Linda just filled the bar stool I didn’t want to sit in anymore. We weren’t twenty, and as far as I was concerned our days of hanging out at Henny’s over Irish coffees, just because, were long gone. I had piano lessons and soccer games and orthodontist appointments, and Linda didn’t have any of those. She was available after work to sit beside him in bars and laugh at his jokes and gaze at him like he was a superhero. As for me, I didn’t have the time or the inclination anymore to be that girl for him again. He was my husband and I was his wife, and we had children, and as wonderful as being young and drunk and free with it all before you is, I still thought that being grown up and part of a family with them all around you was even better. Dan obviously felt differently and Linda was right there to remind him that you don’t always have to be an adult, you don’t always have to do what’s right, and sometimes it’s okay to just do what you want. That was her sales pitch and Dan was a very interested buyer.

was always afraid of my mother’s anger. Ever since I was very little, her screaming and yelling frightened me, leaving me with a strong  desire to please everyone. From an early age I learned how to walk on eggshells and to disappear from view, even if I was in the same room as my mom, all designed to avoid being the target of her rage. It was the perfect training for anyone aspiring to excel in the future as a doormat and a victim.

stuck to that decision no matter how much or how many times he tried to persuade me to change my mind, and thank God I did, because I still have that time when I belonged to myself to remember now.

always hated the forced gaiety and rampant drunken stupidity of New Year’s Eve anyway.

It was the tale of a woman scorned, a woman locked in battle over her man, her money, her children, and her rights as a long-term wife. It was a morality tale of Biblical proportions, involving adultery and covetousness, all of it wrapped in a great big flag emblazoned with the almighty U.S. dollar—and concluding in what, on the face of it, appeared to be a most blood-curdling case of stark, premeditated murder in the first degree. Shooting them in their sleep? No soap opera writer could have concocted better.

Further, the order noted, "It is apparent to the Court that Wife must ultimately take some responsibility for contributing to her own support …

David Lusterman's opinions. He spoke in the universal language

As the very term implies, this is a court-ordered effort to get the weary old mom out of the house and back into the job market, so that she can contribute to her own support.

William Styron's book ‘Memoirs in Madness’. She underlined nearly the whole thing.

I’ve also learned, thank goodness, that anger and resentment are just like poison. Left to fester, they will destroy and attack any chance or opportunity you’ll ever have of being more and living fully. Fear,

she no longer even spoke of him as her former husband. Now he was "the cuntsucker," the new woman in his life was "the cunt," and together they had "fucked me".

I couldn’t leave him and I couldn’t go home. All of my things were gone and I had nowhere else to go.

I read 'The Kite Runner,' and I understood 'defeated guilt' for the first time.

time that I started calling him an 'asshole' to his face. Me doing that drove him crazy. Dan was a serious control freak and he had lost all control of me. Of course, the downside was that I had also lost all control of me too.

Women

What most people experiencing difficulties don’t realize, or want to realize early enough to avoid screwing up, is that they’re just going on with their lives, coping with their circumstances, rather than using their minds to control the effects their circumstances are having on them.

decisions. I never thought it was abusive, I just thought he was a very high-strung, difficult man who was under enormous pressure all the time, some of it self-imposed.

The sad thing is that by the time he had the money and time for all that, he did it with Linda and not me.

Linda was right there to remind him that you don’t always have to be an adult, you don’t always have to do what’s right, and sometimes it’s okay to just do what you want. That was her sales pitch and Dan was a very interested buyer.

1983 through 1985 were the worst years of my life. They were harder than being dirt poor; they were harder even than being in prison.

They were living a life I had chosen to leave back in 1982 when I had started going to Al-Anon.

it's all over! Whatever happens, it's over. I don't have to worry about anything anymore!

Like a candle in the wind, she was, at one minute bright, even brilliant, in her thoughts; in the next moment, her intelligence flickered dimly, illuminating nothing except her own pathetic decline.

Either you understood impulsive rage, and the memory failures that sometimes go with it, or you didn't. That was it.

Nelson immediately told him to give Betty however much money she wanted, in order to promptly resolve the custody dispute, which was only hurting the children.

Hers was the timeless tale of the imbalance of power between the sexes, at least in traditional marriages. She was typical of millions of wives who buy into the age-old bargain—he works, she housekeeps—only to discover in middle age that, when he walks out, "The wife doesn't even have the elemental rights of a business partner who got screwed. If Dan Broderick had defrauded a business associate the way he did me when he broke our contract, he would've been the one in jail today, not me.