Mandy Stadtmiller > Quotes

“I laughed, too, and this lesson registered in my brain: Laughing at pain meant you didn’t have to deal with it. When everything was wrecked, nothing was. When the worst had happened, the worst was over.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“You can still love your father as much as you always have. That never goes away. But you don’t have to keep engaging in the same way again and again with people who have hurt you, hoping for a different result. You can protect yourself first. But you don’t have to stop loving them either.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“There is something called the ‘looking-glass self,’ where you judge your self-worth based on what you think other people think of you. You base your identity off the love you perceive others can give you, and then you readjust your opinion of yourself accordingly.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“You don’t need to “attach” yourself to anyone. You just need to make yourself someone who you can stand to be with—alone.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“we are walking around in a postcard. We are staying in Arraial d’Ajuda, a picturesque district in Porto Seguro, Bahia, in a little resort three minutes from the beach by the name of Casarão Alto Mucugê. (You should actually check”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“But you don’t have to keep engaging in the same way again and again with people who have hurt you, hoping for a different result. You can protect yourself first. But you don’t have to stop loving them either.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“Whenever something occurs in the world, there’s always what occurred and then there is the story about what occurred, and then there is the meaning made out of the story about what occurred,” he tells me in explaining why most communication—filled with all of its half-truths, twisted perceptions, and withholdings—is so problematic. “Most people stay lost in the meaning made out of the story.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“We can always correct course. What seems like certain death can at any moment become certain rebirth.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“I keep waiting for my life to begin. I keep waiting for everything to be okay. But what if I stopped waiting?”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“Besides, playing a role protects me—from feeling any hurt I might feel if I was just being myself.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“I am the soulmate I've been looking for all this time. I'm the only person who can decide if I'm the good guy or the bad guy in my story. I'm the only person who can decide I am worthy of love, all the time, even when I'm falling down on my face yet again or when I'm trying my absolute best.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“I'd rather die alone than spend a minute with someone who doesn't want to be with me, you owe me fucking nothing.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“That’s what I have been doing my whole life, I realize. Always looking outside of myself for validation that I am okay, that I am worth something. Never believing that the key to self-esteem lay inside myself all along.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“There's one part of me that wants to be open and vulnerable to love and then there's another part that's all about self-preservation and survival and I just want to run from anything that might end up hurting me or hurt the other person first.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“There’s nothing worse than feeling like you should feel happy about something and feeling totally unable,”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“If you suck at dating, you'll be aces at writing about it.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“I can’t change anyone. I certainly can’t go back in time. But I can change myself.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“They’re so simple and so true. No one has mastered everything. We just have to keep learning, getting better, trying to be our best selves.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“Here’s the key,” she says. “You don’t actually know what I think of you. You are, in essence, guessing what I think of you. And then based off of that guess, that’s how you are determining your self-worth. Do you see how dangerous that can be?”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“They don’t read any of my stories in the Post, and when I try to talk to them about it—about what it’s like to have to write a cover story in under an hour that the entire city will be reading the next day and how much pressure that is, my dad responds by bringing up a really great email he wrote someone recently. I feel so dismissed when they act like this. I don’t feel cared for or nurtured or seen.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“I am a survivor—and I can and will always be there for myself, no matter what.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“You don’t have to curl up and cry in defeat. It can sure feel like that at times, but if you’ve built yourself up strong enough, you can and will go on. You will thrive. You’re stronger than your circumstances.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“She abides by my number one rule for people: Never be boring.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“You know what ‘shame’ stands for?” Heather responds. “ ‘Should Have Already Mastered Everything.’ ”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“A funny thing happens when you don’t hook up with a guy—and you don’t burn the connection. You can develop an actual relationship.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“I want to move on,” I say to him. “We were so young,” James says. “We just saw in each other a sense of possibility.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“But my parents taught me it is okay to recognize and name and examine your flaws and mistakes-- and that those flaws and mistakes do not define you.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“Men are a waste of time, my career is not.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable: A Memoir

“I am the soul mate I have been looking for all this time. I am the only person who can decide if I am the good guy or the bad guy in my story. I am the only person who can decide that I am worthy of love—all the time, even when I am falling down on my face yet again or when I am trying my absolute best. As I think about this concept, I start exploring and investigating, and the possibilities feel like beams of light and love are shooting into the most bruised and battered parts of my soul. What if I were to truly focus on giving myself all the love and compassion and forgiveness I’ve longed for from someone else all my life? What if I no longer beat myself up? What if I learned to treasure the idea of taking care of myself and my heart and my boundaries, even when it felt unnatural and uncomfortable? What if I accepted and forgave the ugliest parts of my history—every guy, every drug, every deception—and stopped terrorizing my heart with impotent regret? What if I was forgiven and free? What if I always had been?”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable

“Maybe the fear that constantly wracks me could be processed as something else: excitement.”
― Mandy Stadtmiller, Unwifeable