| It's not breaking the eggs that does the lasting harm; | | | | perceptions of reality and your very sense of self |
| it's the continual walking eggshells. Emotional damage | | | | change for the worse. |
| has a way of lingering in the times between | | | | The cold fact is that it's hard not to lose yourself in |
| resentful, angry, or abusive flare-ups. The empty, dull | | | | the morass of what you should say or what you |
| ache of unhappiness is most accurately measured in | | | | need to do (to keep things peaceful) and how you're |
| the accumulative effect of these small moments of | | | | supposed to be at any given moment. If you have |
| disconnection, isolation, and dread. | | | | to be one thing one minute and behave a different |
| If you live with a resentful, angry, or abusive partner, | | | | way in another (depending on your partner's moods), |
| you probably have a vague feeling, at least now and | | | | your confidence and sense of self can seem to |
| then, that you have lost yourself. In your constant | | | | disappear. You begin to feel that you cannot reclaim |
| efforts to tiptoe around someone else's moods in | | | | yourself or begin to feel better until he changes and |
| the hope of avoiding blow-ups, put-downs, criticism, | | | | starts treating you better. |
| sighs of disapproval, or cold shoulders, you constantly | | | | If you are a resentful, angry, or abusive partner, you |
| edit what you say. You second-guess your own | | | | must realize that you like yourself when you're |
| judgment, your own ideas, and your own | | | | compassionate and caring to the people you love and |
| preferences about how to live. You begin to question | | | | that you don't like yourself when you are resentful or |
| what you think is right and wrong. Ultimately, your | | | | angry at them, much less abusive to them. |