Connection Friendship Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Connection Friendship. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.
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Jon Katz
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It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.
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John Joseph Powell (The Secret of Staying in Love)
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We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
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William James
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A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.
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Lois Wyse
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The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The moon will guide you through the night with her brightness, but she will always dwell in the darkness, in order to be seen.
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Shannon L. Alder
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If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
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Friends ask you questions; enemies question you.
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Criss Jami (Healology)
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Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Soulmate" is an overused term, but a true soul connection is very rare, and very real.
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Hilary Duff (Devoted (Elixir, #2))
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When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship.
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David D. Burns
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The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.
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Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
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At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
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Benjamin J. Carey (Barefoot in November)
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Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.
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Jim Butcher (White Night (The Dresden Files, #9))
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Encourage, lift and strengthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by us all. For we are connected, one and all.
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Deborah Day
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Time is too swift for those who fear, too long for those who wait, too short for those who finally find peace, but for those who love, time is eternal. For nothing is ever lost that God wants you to find.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Friends are not a number. You can't collect connections. You can't just go out one day and be like, "Hey, I need some friends!" *goes shopping, scours social media*
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Connor Franta (A Work in Progress)
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If you truly loved someone you won't become their enemy. You will become their guardian angel.
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Shannon L. Alder
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After listening and getting to know more about you. Also, feeling a deep connection between us that goes beyond physical attraction. I'm beginning to feel for, so much more than the friendship that I waited to grow with you. I'm not going to try and rush things. However, I don't want to wait until it's to late.
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Jonathan Anthony Burkett (Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable (Volume 1))
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People are opportunities. The gift is in the interaction and the connection with another person, whether it lasts forever or not.
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Colleen Seifert
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Sometimes the bridges you burn light the way out of your darkness, but the memory of the blaze will be burned into your heart and mind forever.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Itโ€™s the people we hardly know, and not our closest friends, who will improve our lives most dramatically
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Meg Jay (The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter - And How to Make the Most of Them Now)
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Build me up and I with you. For we are more one than two.
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Deborah Day
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when two aliebns find each other in a strange place, it feels a little more like home.
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Jomny Sun (Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too)
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What is a friend? We probably all have our own definitions. For me, it's someone I don't feel alone with. Who doesn't bore me. Whose life I connect with and who takes reciprocal interest in my life. It's someone I feel comfortable turning to when I need to be talked off the ledge, and for whom I am glad to return the favor. Just a few people in my life fit that bill.
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Sophia Dembling (The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World (Perigee Book))
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As an introvert, you crave intimate moments and deep connections--and those usually aren't found in a crowd.
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Jenn Granneman (The Secret Lives of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World)
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I missed him, of course, but sometimes close friendships have a tidal beat that pulls you towards different shores though the ocean that connects you remains.
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Russell Brand (Booky Wook 2: This Time it's Personal)
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Positive energy is attracted to positive energy.
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Deborah Day
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Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
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If you're not happy in life then you need to change, calibrate, readjust...flush your negative energy and fill it with positive energy; How do we do that you might ask? well I would start by making others happy, deseases are not the only thing that spreads easy. We are all connected in some form of unseen energy... think how those around you will impact you and make you feel if they were happy?
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Al Munoz
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You cannot connect with anyone except through reality.
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Stefan Molyneux
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We might not know we are seeking people who best enrich our lives, but somehow on a deep subconscious level we absolutely are. Whether the bond is temporary or permanent, whether it succeeds or fails, fate is simply a configuration of choices that combine with others to shape the relationships that surround us. We cannot choose our family, but we can choose our friends, and we sometimes, before we even meet them.
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Simon Pegg (Nerd Do Well)
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Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.
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Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World)
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I grabbed his hand. He jumped and stared at the connection like something both magical and dangerous had happened. "Do you wanna be friends?" I asked.
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Francesca Zappia (Made You Up)
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Never invest in any kind of relationship with anyone who is not willing to work on themselves just a little every day. A person who takes no interest in any form of self-improvement, personal development or spiritual growth will also not be inclined to make much of an effort building a truly meaningful connection with you. A relationship with only one partner willing to do the work ceases to be a relationship. And as anyone who has been there will tell you - it's pointless to try and dance the tango solo.
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Anthon St. Maarten
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My fear of being real, of being seen, paralyzes me into silence. I crave the touch and the connection, but Iโ€™m not always brave enough to open my hand and reach out. This is the great challenge: to be seen, accepted, and loved, I must first reveal, offer, and surrender.
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ร„nnรค White (Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith)
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A friendship where you're always trying to be considerate of the other person, always worrying about what they think, always responding to every single text, always seeking their approval and then finally connecting with them, isn't friendship at all.
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Wataru Watari (ใ‚„ใฏใ‚Šไฟบใฎ้’ๆ˜ฅใƒฉใƒ–ใ‚ณใƒกใฏใพใกใŒใฃใฆใ„ใ‚‹ใ€‚1)
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No matter how lonely and isolated and starved for connection you are, thereโ€™s always the possibility in the online world that you can find a place to be accepted, or discover a friendship thatโ€™s started with the smallest of interests but could last a lifetime.
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Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
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Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.
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Kate Christensen (The Astral)
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Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself.
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John Williams (Stoner)
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With so many people in the world i am confident in saying, if you connect with someone on a soul level you dont take them for granted.
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Nikki Rowe
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Do unto others what you want them to do to you. Donโ€™t deceive if you donโ€™t want to be deceived. Donโ€™t cheat if you donโ€™t want to be cheated. Relationship is mutual. This is the golden rule for all great connections!
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Israelmore Ayivor (Shaping the dream)
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Friendship leads to human connection, which feeds your soul. More than kale or spinning or fifteen-minute naps under your desk, conscious communication with your clutch friends is the best form of self-care.
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Karen Kilgariff (Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide)
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The thing is, I never had a friend like Sohrab before. One who understood me without even trying. Who knew what it was like to be stuck on the outside because of one little thing that set you apart.
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Adib Khorram (Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius The Great, #1))
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Distance and time might keep people apart, but the heart and mind will always stay connected by memories, miracles and the power of two unlikely souls that were destined to meet.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Hereโ€™s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, โ€œbonusโ€ relationships to the truly important ones. Womenโ€™s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes childrenโ€ฆitโ€™s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendshipโ€ฆThis kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones weโ€™re taught and told are primary โ€“ spouses, children, parents. It is loveโ€ฆSupport, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends
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Emily Rapp
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If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?
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Simon Pegg (Nerd Do Well)
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Some people will hear you louder in silence. Those are your tribe - they'll get you through the tough days and give you something to laugh about on the ride.
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Nikki Rowe
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It's not that we want others to fail, but we need to know that our own sorrows have echoes in others people's lives. That's what connects us. Strength may be impressive, but it's vulnerability that builds friendships.
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Jessica Pan (Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously)
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I'm not sure if our friendship is strong enough to survive into next year when weโ€™re away at college. But. We know each other in a way that no one else can. We share a history that makes us permanently connected. So I have to hope for us. All I can do is hope.
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Susane Colasanti (Something Like Fate)
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Every friend was once a stranger and if you know this, you have to understand that conversations are the beginning of connection
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Israelmore Ayivor (Shaping the dream)
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When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can.
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Mohsin Hamid (Moth Smoke)
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In our opposed forms of loneliness and self-recognition and recognition of the other, we touched each other often as we spoke; and on shore in explorations of the past, we strolled with our arms linked...
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Harold Brodkey (Profane Friendship: A Novel)
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It is through the strength of what is genuine that meaningful connections build into relationships.
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Michelle Tillis Lederman (11 Laws of Likability)
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What is it about friendship that makes being among friends so much richer than being among the most accomplished and interesting strangers?"---Connecting
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Sandy Sheehy
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It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.
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Gail Caldwell (Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship)
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Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part--time and space and the heart's weariness are the blander executioners of human connection.
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Gail Caldwell (Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship)
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Build me up and I with you. For we are more one than two.
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Deborah Day
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No connection can ever be broken if love holds tight at both ends.
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Shannon L. Alder
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A connection is an essential ingreidient in any healthy physical relationship.
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C. Nzingha Smith (Lust Have Recipes, Aphrodisiac Cookbook)
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If you cannot wait for time to unearth roots, you must dig.
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Nelou Keramati
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For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.
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Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)
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Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.
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Oliver Sacks (Gratitude: Essays)
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You may have fallen down, but you can get back up again. You may have doors shut, but new doors will open for you. You may have been lied on, but the truth will come to the light. You may have been hurt, but the pain will pass. You are a survivor. You have a history of surviving.
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Heart Crush)
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He not only rocked my body in ways Iโ€™d never experienced before, but we connected on a level that surpassed friendship. We fucked with a single-minded need to extinguish and reconstruct.
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V. Theia (It Was Always Love (Taboo Love #2))
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Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. Weโ€™d rather text than talk.
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Sherry Turkle (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other)
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If we love someone deeply, be they friends, family or lovers, donโ€™t treat the relationship like a playground game of back and forth or tit for tat. See it as a loving connection and let that be the basis of it all.
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lauren klarfeld
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What I want to say is that we all judge each other, but even though we all do it, that's not an excuse. Judging is still one of the most hurtful, spiteful impulses we own, and our judgments keep us from building a stronger tribe...or having a tribe in the first place. Our judgment prohibits us from beautiful, life-affirming friendships. Our judgment keeps us from connecting in deeper, richer ways because we're too stuck on the surface-level assumptions we've made. Our judging has to stop.
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Rachel Hollis (Girl Wash your Face)
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There's something about you, Your eyes speak a story in a language only known to my soul. The kind of communication we as humans dream about, the one that reaches into the core of who you are and loves you for it. It doesn't appear often or by accident & when it happens you just know " There's something about you ".
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Nikki Rowe
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Everyone has connections. For some it's family, like my brother and I. For some it's friendship, like you and Wes. And for others, it's something much more powerful, something yet to be seen.
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Abra Ebner (Book of Love (Knight Angels, #1))
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Romance is something people make fun of others for caring about, and yet itโ€™s something thatโ€™s very natural to care aboutโ€”itโ€™s a loving connection between people, like family and friendships: itโ€™s a significant emotional choice people make.
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Sarah Rees Brennan
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I know what love is and it is friendship, set afire. Love is easy. Love is chemistryโ€”a science lab. Love is as simple as connecting this together with that. Her brilliant eyes and my heated heart. But this is not love. Not yet. Genuine love is friendship. Genuine love resides only in the present moment. Genuine love is everyday. Genuine love feels no need to entertain the space away. Genuine love is up, genuine love is down and yet genuine love never wavers. Love is something else entire: it is caring. It is arguing, but with curiosityโ€”it is giving an inch when the other is certainly wrongโ€”it is teasing, it is empathy, it is respect, it is admiration each morning.
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Waylon H. Lewis (Things I Would Like To Do With You)
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Love is ageless and colorless. It is a spiritual force that binds two hearts and two souls together as one.
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Ellen J. Barrier (The Price We Must Pay for Our Father's Sins (Volume 1 and 2))
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Claire understood things about Bay without Bay having to say a word.
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Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
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After so many years drifting, not connected to anything, I'm finally tethered. Safe and loved, in the middle. We start senior year like kings, like nothing can ever tear us apart. We're wrong.
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Abigail Haas (Dangerous Girls)
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This is the best thing about men's friendships: most any awkwardness can be ignored by mutual agreement and, true connection being unimaginable, you can get on with the easier business of parallel living.
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William Landay (Defending Jacob)
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This connection had the potential to be too special to ruin it with the hurt of misfired romantic intentions. And while half of me wanted to tear his shirt off with my teeth, I also wanted him to be in my life for the duration. I didn't want him to be the one I avoided because he'd hurt me. If I was just his friend, then I would still be blessed. If it meant swallowing my pride and being his shoulder when he got hurt, or being the one he ranted at when he was angry, I was prepared to do it with dignity.
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Jessica Thompson (This is a Love Story)
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There are some things success is not. It's not fame. It's not money or power. Success is waking up in the morning so excited about what you have to do that you literally fly out the door. It's getting to work with people you love. Success is connecting with the world and making people feel. It's finding a way to bind together who have nothing in common but a dream. It's falling asleep at night knowing you did the best job you could. Success is joy and freedom and friendship. And success is love.
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Allison Burnett
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Isn't friendship amazing? At one time, our friends were just strangers to us. However, there was something special about these strangers; you felt a connection, something in common, a special bond, and your friendship began. What if, as we pass all of the โ€˜strangersโ€™ in our lives, if we looked at these strangers as if they could be a friend? What a different world it would beโ€ฆ.
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James A. Murphy (The Waves of Life Quotes and Daily Meditations)
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Stop wearing that mask that is trying to be a match for everybody, and realise that you have to have more of a 1s and 10s model. A 1s and 10s model means that if you want to be a 10 for somebody you have to risk being a 1 for somebody else. [...] You wanna express who you really are.
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Steve Pavlina
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A few years ago I heard Jerome Kagan, a distinguished emeritus professor of child psychology at Harvard, say to the Dalai Lama that for every act of cruelty in this world there are hundreds of small acts of kindness and connection. His conclusion: "To be benevolent rather than malevolent is probably a true feature of our species." Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Numerous studies of disaster response around the globe have shown that social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma. Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else's mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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She looked to the roses, but it was Tibe's face she saw. It was familiar now, after months of friendship. She knew his nose, his lips, his jaw, his eyes most of all. They stirred something in her, a connection she did not know she could make with another person. She saw herself in them, her own pain, her own joy. We are the same, she thought. Searching for something to keep us anchored, both alone in a crowded room.
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Victoria Aveyard (Queen Song (Red Queen, #0.1))
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He was like the other half of myself,' says Boris...Ulrich says, 'You haven't lost {him}, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes. 'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinons, or your hair has turned like his. 'There are no more facts about him -- that part is over. Now is the time for essential things...Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son. 'You'll live astride the line that separates life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them; you'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgment falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.
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Rana Dasgupta (Solo)
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I don't want fleeting friendships or relationships or passion in life, give me fleeting moments in coffee shops and walks by the water but I will never be satisfied with empty kinships that are fleeting & undecided. Those connections are what make us all human and I dare not settle my wild little heart for something of so little depth.
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Nikki Rowe
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All you have to do is wait. Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone's always too busy. They're too talented, their schedules are too full. They're too interested in themselves to think about what's fair.
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Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
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Feminist psychologists have suggested that a toxic friendship is often one in which a women's own personal growth and individuation is sacrificed at the expense of the demands of the other person. Sometimes choosing oneself rather than the friendship is important for future personal growth and individuation. But women have a difficult time separating from each other because emotional connection is so highly valued and broken friendships are seen as failures.
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Irene S. Levine (Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend)
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Men know that most women want to have an emotional connection with someone before they sleep with them. Men know that a lot of women think it's romantic to be friends first, and then the friendship blossoms into a relationship. Men know that they have to jump through all these hoops first, before they can get laid. And that's really all romance and courtship is to a man: hoops he has to jump through to get laid.
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Oliver Markus (Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends)
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He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return. That, I think, is the shock of any relationship ending. It is realizing that what is still an ongoing relationship to someone is, for the other person, something finished and done with.
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Robin Hobb (Fool's Assassin (The Fitz and the Fool, #1))
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Men pretend to be โ€œjust a friendโ€ at first, even though they want to sleep with you from day one. Otherwise they wouldn't be spending any time, money or attention on you, because these are limited resources and they need these resources to attract a mate. They can't afford to squander them. So they apply these resources to the female that looks to be their best bet to get laid. But they also know that they can't tell the woman on day one that they want to sleep with her, because she'd think it's creepy. So they play along with the illusion that it's โ€œjust a friendshipโ€ that โ€œsuddenlyโ€ developed into more, when the woman finally feels inclined to sleep with the guy โ€œbecause they have a deep connection.โ€ But that was really his goal from day one.
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Oliver Markus (Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends)
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Intimate, or emotional, loneliness is the longing for a close confidante or intimate partnerโ€”someone with whom you share a deep mutual bond of affection and trust. Relational, or social, loneliness is the yearning for quality friendships and social companionship and support. Collective loneliness is the hunger for a network or community of people who share your sense of purpose and interests. These three dimensions together reflect the full range of high-quality social connections that humans need in order to thrive. The lack of relationships in any of these dimensions can make us lonely, which helps to explain why we may have a supportive marriage yet still feel lonely for friends and community.
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Vivek H. Murthy (Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness)
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Andy: Most of the things I did with her partly in mind. And if I said or did an inauthentic thing, I could almost hear her groaning over my shoulder. But now she's gone and I really don't know how I'll get along without her. Melissa: (Looking at him for the first time.) You'll survive, Andy... Andy: I have a wonderful wife, fine children, and a place in the world I feel proud of, but the death of Melissa suddenly leaves a huge gap in my life... Melissa: Oh now, Andy... Andy: The thought of never again being able to write to her, to connect to her, to get some signal back from her, fills me with an emptiness which is hard to describe. Melissa: Now Andy, stop... Andy: I don't think there are many men in this world who have had the benefit of such a friendship with such a woman. But it was more than friendship, too. I know now that I loved her. I loved her even from the day I met her, when she walked into second grade, looking like the lost princess of Oz. Melissa: Oh, Andy, PLEASE. I can't bear it. Andy: I don't think I've ever loved anyone the way I loved her, and I know I never will again. She was at the heart of my life, and already I miss her desperately. I just wanted to say this to you and to her. Sincerely, Andy Ladd. Melissa: Thank you, Andy.
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A.R. Gurney (Love Letters)
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Some compelling proof that women are indeed not born any more capable of empathy or connection than men comes from psychologist Niobe Way. In 2013 Way published a book called Deep Secrets: Boysโ€™ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, which explores the friendships of young straight men. Way followed a group of boys from childhood through adolescence and found that when they were little, boysโ€™ friendships with other boys were just as intimate and emotional as friendships between girls; it wasnโ€™t until the norms of masculinity sank in that the boys ceased to confide in or express vulnerable feelings for one another. By the age of eighteen, societyโ€™s โ€œno homoโ€ creed had become so entrenched that they felt like the only people they could look to for emotional support were women, further perpetuating the notion that women are obligated by design to carry humanityโ€™s emotional cargo.
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Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
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My friendships have stopped being so exclusive and the guidelines have simplified. Does knowing me help someone I know become a better person? Am I becoming a better person knowing someone? Hereโ€™s how I know a relationship is working. When Iโ€™m with that person, I am happy. I look forward to seeing that person. Iโ€™m not afraid that that person will hurt me intentionally. Iโ€™m not hesitant to speak up if I do feel hurt. Knowing that person, challenges me to grow. Being around that person gives me comfort when I feel sad. That person is someone I want to celebrate with when things are great. Iโ€™ve let go of expecting people to behave a certain way or to treat me a certain way. However, I feel Iโ€™m more idealistic about my relationships than Iโ€™ve ever been. I want the most difficult thing you can ask a person and that is for them to be themselves, the good and the bad. I want authenticity where many find it hard to be authentic with themselves. Itโ€™s from our authentic selves where true connections are made. Itโ€™s from those true connections where I finally feel understood.
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Corin
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She knew it was time, What for was the mystery but focused; she remained. She turned her back on anything that no longer served her strengths nor taught her vital lessons with her weaknesses. She said no without explanation & assigned validation back just to parking spots. She was fierce but gentle and authentic in her approach to live even if it meant standing alone. She knew the hard days weren't over but stood proud that she had already survived some of the worst. She laughed in the midst of a mindfuck & gathered her worth with all the pieces of herself that have held her together throughout the years. She knew it was time What for was the mystery, but focused; she remained. She learnt that motherhood provided unconditional love doesn't have boundaries, it's pure in all its forms. Family are rare connections. Friendships are like shoes, not all will fit but when some do it's like you have won the lotto. She learnt that every love was different and how important it was to keep her heart open for the possibility of being able to experience it just one more time.
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Nikki Rowe
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. . .To go as a river . .had taken me a long while to understand. . . meant. . .flowing forward against obstacle . . .like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself. I had been shaped by my kindredโ€” my lost family and lost love; my found friendships, though few; my trees that kept on living and every tree that gave me shelter; every creature I met along the way, every raindrop and snowflake choosing my shoulder, and every breeze that shifted the air; every winding path beneath my feet, every place I laid my hands and head, and every creek like the one before me, rolling off the hillside, gaining strength in gravity, spinning through the next eddy, pushing around the next bend, taking and giving in quiet agreement with every living thing.
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Shelley Read (Go as a River)
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After all relationships had sell-by dates. Sometimes, the ones with the most passion were the ones to burn out faster. Others had a sweet and long-winding coil which burned with slow amicability. At times, it was true, people rekindled a dying ember with a new flame. But they hardly ever noticed the rekindling had come after some time of estrangement - whether physical or emotional. Because people needed newness to make a thing last indefinitely. To make it really last. And because Jan didn't like letting people go, she knew to look for the signs of love's waning. So she could tell how to ease it down slowly into its grave and keep her lovers as friends. Because she really believed people were meant to cross paths. People were meant to stay in your life. There was a reason for all encounters. And relationships had to be cosseted, no matter their shelf life. But they had to be allowed to change shape and form. It had to be given space to grow into something different.
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Adelheid Manefeldt (Consequence)
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If you do not allow yourself to rush into falling for someone that you have not become friends with first, you will be more sure when you let yourself go to the next step. Certainly you might find yourself having all sorts of feelings. Enjoy them. But do not believe them. Only believe your experience of getting to know a person and seeing if you can share at a deep level. See if you find that he or she is a person of the kind of character you would trust as a friend. And as important as all of that, see if that person is a person that you would like spending time with if there were no romance at all. That is the one true measure of a friend, a person with whom you like to spend time, having no regard to how you are spending it. โ€œHanging outโ€ is fulfilling in and of itself. And that, long-term, requires character, and in the deepest of friendships, shared values as well. You would want your best friends to be honest, faithful, deep, spiritual, responsible, connecting, growing, loving, and the like. Make sure that those qualities are also present in the person you are falling in love with.
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Henry Cloud (Boundaries in Dating)
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You know that feeling of invincibility you sometimes get, especially when young and testing yourself - well that could be because actually know deep down that we are indeed eternal. We come into this world to live a life, to experience it, from somewhere else, some other plane, but we are programmed by all around us to deny or forget this - until one day we may remember again. That feeling of blissful reconnection with our source can be invoked through nature, beautiful writing or art or music, any detailed craft or work of discovery or personal dedication, meditation or other mentally balancing practice, or even through religious experience if there is a pure communion (not a pretence of it). But we should not yearn to return too soon, we should accept that we have come here for the duration of each life, and revel in the chance to learn and grow on this splendid planet. We can draw a deep sense of being-ness. peace, and love from this connection, which will sustain us through any trial. Once nurtured, this becomes stronger than any other connection, so of course our relationships here are most joyful when they allow us the personal freedom to spend time developing and celebrating that connection. Our deepest friendships form with those we can share such time and experiences with - discussing, meditating, immersing ourselves in nature, or creating our music, art, written or other works. Our journeys here are voyages of discovery, opening out the wonders within and all around. What better companions could we have than those who are able to fully share in such delights with us?
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Jay Woodman
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friendship nostalgia i miss the days when my friends knew every mundane detail about my life and i knew every ordinary detail about theirs adulthood has starved me of that consistencyโ€‹ โ€‹that us those walks around the block those long conversations when we were too lost in the moment to care what time it was when we won-and celebrated when we failed and celebrated even harder when we were just kids now we have our very important jobs that fill up our very busy schedules we have to compare calendars just to plan coffee dates that one of us will eventually cancel because adulthood is being too exhausted to leave our apartments most days i miss belonging to a group of people bigger than myself it was that belonging that made life easier to live how come no one warned us about how we'd graduate and grow apart after everything we'd been through how come no one said one of life's biggest challenges would be trying to stay connected to the people that make us feel alive no one talks about the hole a friend can leave inside you when they go off to make their dreams come true in college we used to stay up till 4 in the morning dreaming of what we'd do the moment we started earning real paychecks now we finally have the money to cross everything off our bucket lists but those lists are collecting dust in some lost corridor of our minds sometimes when i get lonely โ€‹iโ€‹ still search for them i'd give anything to go back and do the foolish things we used to do i feel the most present in your presence when we're laughing so hard the past slides off our shoulders and worries of the future slip away the truth isโ€‹ โ€‹i couldn't survive without my friends they know exactly what i need before i even know that i need the way we hold each other is just different so forget grabbing coffee i don't want to have another dinner where we sit across from each other at a table reminiscing about old times when we have so much time left to make new memories with how about you go pack your bags and i'll pack mine you take a week off work i'll grab my keys and let's go for ride we've got years of catching up to do
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Rupi Kaur