After I Do Quotes

“In all of the possible scenarios, I always assumed the question was whether or not I would end up brokenhearted.
It never even occurred to me that I might end up breaking a heart.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I think if I’ve learned anything about how to . . . fix this,” I say, “it’s that I really need to work on telling you what I want.” “Yeah,” he says. “Same here. That’s a big one for me. I was just going along with what I thought you wanted all the time, and after a while, I think I just grew pissed off about it.” “Yeah,” I say, nodding my head. “I assumed that the way to be a good partner to you was compliance.” “Yes!” he says, eager in agreement. “And so I never asked for the things I needed.” “You expected me to know them.” “Yeah,” I say. “And when you didn’t know them, or you didn’t guess them, I just assumed you didn’t care. That I didn’t matter. That you were choosing you over me.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“The year is not over, and I already feel I have gained a great deal of perspective that I didn’t have this time last year. I understand myself better. I understand what I did to contribute to the downfall of my marriage. I also understand what I allowed to happen to my marriage. When this trial period is over, I know I will be a changed woman.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I've read the articles that show up in all the women's magazines about marital ruts and turning the heat up in your marriage. They don't tell you anything real. They don't have any answers.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I kiss him. I kiss him again. He’s so cute. And he’s so handsome. And he’s so smart. And funny. And charming. I don’t know how I stopped seeing all of that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I am overwhelmed with love for my mom right now. She always knows just what to do. When do you learn that in life? When do you learn what to do?”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Ryan and I are two people who used to be in love. What a beautiful thing to have been. What a sad thing to be.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I realized that I had stopped seeing him as someone who, you know, was attractive, I guess. I was taking him for granted in that way. And now that I know that he is dating, it’s very clear to me what I had when I had it”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Brutal honesty. It’s OK to hurt me. It’s OK to hurt my feelings. It’s OK to embarrass me. As long as you do it from love. Nothing you could ever say out of love could hurt as much as it did to look into your eyes and see that you couldn’t stand me anymore.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“We need each other. Whatever that means. We complement each other. We have great potential to make each other better. I was the one who had the strength to be honest about what we were doing to each other. I was the one who was brave enough to break this thing in half in the hopes of putting it back together. But when I lost faith, he’s the one who had enough for both of us.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Marriage is about commitment. It’s about loyalty. It’s not about happiness. Happiness is secondary. And ultimately, marriage is about children.” She gives me a knowing look. “If you had a baby, no matter how unhappy you were together, you’d have stayed together. Children bind you. They connect you. That’s what marriage is about.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“We were in love, high on the novelty of marriage. The words husband and wife felt as if they had a shine to them. They were simply more fun to say than all the other words we knew.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“This isn’t what thirty is supposed to look like. It’s not what thirty is supposed to feel like. By thirty, you’re supposed to have things figured out, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to be questioning everything you’ve built your life on.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Isn't it nice when you've outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is?”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“You want that normal family life so bad. You wanted it so bad you met someone at nineteen and never looked back.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“April 18

Dear Ryan,

I'm considering writing to one of those advice columnists about us. That's how confused I still am.

When we started this, I thought that I just needed some time away from you. I just needed time to breathe. I needed a chance to live on my own and appreciate you again by missing you.

Those first few months were torture. I felt so lonely. I felt exactly what I wanted myself to feel, which was that I couldn't live without you. I felt it all day. I felt it when I slept in an empty bed. I felt it when I came home to an empty house. But somehow, one day, it sort of became OK. I don't know when that happened.

I thought at one point that maybe if I learned who you truly are, then I could love you again. Then I thought maybe if I learn who I really am, what I really want, then I could love you again. I have been grasping at things for months, trying to learn a lesson big enough, important enough, all-encompassing enough that it would bring us back together. But mostly, I'm just learning lessons about how to live my life. I'm learning how to be a better sister. I'm learning just how strong my mother has always been. That I should take my grandmother's advice more often. That sex can be healing. That Charlie isn't such a little kid anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've started focusing on other things. I don't feel all that desperate to figure us out and fix this. I feel sort of OK that it's not fixed.

That's not the direction this is supposed to go, is it?

Love,
Lauren”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Just because you can live without someone doesn’t mean you want to,” she says.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I can feel it once again, the way it rises to the surface like a flotation device. The way it keeps bouncing back no matter how hard you push it down.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Change, at least in my life, is more often than not a slow and steady stream. It's not an avalanche. It's more of a snowball effect. - Lauren”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I want to be wrong. It will feel so good to be wrong. I will wallow in my wrongness; I will swim in it. I will breathe it in and let it overtake my lungs and my body, and I will cry it out, heavy tears so full of relief they will be baptismal”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“thoughts become words, and words become actions.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I’m still not sure if I’m going to send these to you. Sometimes I think I will. There is a part of me that feels like years ago I stopped fighting with you. It just became easier to agree with you or ignore you. I feel like I just said whatever you wanted to hear. And I stopped being honest. I stopped telling you what I really thought. What I really wanted. And so maybe if I tell you all of this now, maybe we can clear the air, maybe we can start again. The other part of me thinks that if we do tell each other everything, if I send you this stuff, we might not survive it. So I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“The pain and the joy are locked together, tightly bound. I read the letters over and over again, hoping to separate one from the other, hoping to discern whether love or hate wins out in the end. But it’s like pulling on the ends of a finger trap. The more I try, the tighter they cling to each other.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Some people love that about life, that it's unpredictable and unruly. [...] It doesn't have the common decency to wait for a profound moment to take something from you. [...] It just doesn't care.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“this house is quite literally on the beach and has one-hundred-eighty-degree ocean views from every floor, that it’s something in entertainment. There is a bonfire scheduled for late tonight and a lobster bake picnic scheduled for after the ceremony. Drinks and dancing are on the roof deck.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s a lesson learned by those who have faced the most miserable of tragedies, and it’s a secret that I suspect you yourself already know: the sun will always rise. Always. The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising. And”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Todas las chicas tendrían que besar así. Todas las chicas tendrían que ser como tú.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“All you have to do is never give up”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Quizá es que lo que más necesitas es saber la verdad precisamente cuando piensas que no quieres saberla—.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“Quizá es que necesito saber la verdad más de lo que necesito que me digan lo que quiero oír.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do