Robin (Bridge Four)

“Maybe she wouldn’t, if you told her the truth.” Vex eyed me. “No leveraging, no threats. Just honesty. Stop treating her like a prize and treat her like a partner.” I glared at her. “You make it sound so simple.” “It is simple,” she corrected, undaunted by my scowl. “Just not easy.”
― Tiffany Hunt, The Dark Lord's Guide to Dating (and Other War Crimes)

“And so perhaps it was entirely possible - common, even - for you to look into the eyes of someone you'd been falling in love with, someone you had spent every waking moment with, whose breathing sounded as familiar as your own - and fail to recognize them at all.”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

“Why does she always push her mum away? There’s something about that relationship, something about being a child, and the need of a child to be an individual, to be something more than the things she’s been taught and the way she’s been raised. The need to somehow teach a lesson to the person who has taught her so many lessons? Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even. And it’s not just that. There is a further problem with unconditional love, isn’t there? Because what if you don’t love yourself? What if, like Joanna, you obsess over your flaws and weaknesses, you constantly update the balance sheet of your own personality and find it wanting? Well, then the unconditional love of a parent is a sign that they simply don’t know you. If they truly knew you, their love would be peppered with caveats. “I love you, but…”
― Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune

“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved?”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis