This file is about broken relationships, divorce and unrequited love. No matter how good your life is now, chances are you have been on the losing side of a relationship at least once. Some people choose to scrapbook only happy times. But if scrapbooks are to accurately reflect our lives we can't leave out the parts we don't like. I would encourage everyone to make at least a few pages of not-so-great moments. Even if you don't show them to anyone, it helps work through negative feelings. Also see The Difference Between Men and Women, Sad Love Poems, Missing You, Sad Love Song List and Relationship Humor.
Page Toppers
- Easier Said Than Done
- Every Which Way But Loose
- Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
- Forbidden Love
- Games People Play
- Helplessly Hopelessly
- I may as well try and catch the wind
- It's Only Make Believe
- Leaving is the Only Way Out
- Mission Impossible
- Nothing Left to Say
- One Bridge I Didn't Burn
- Some Memories Just Won't Die
- The Twelfth of Never
- Trying Times
- When will I be loved?
- Where were you when I needed you?
- Why They Call it Falling Now I Know
- www.Memories
- Yesterme, Yesteryou, Yesterday
- You have to kiss a lot of toads to find your handsome prince.
Quotes
- An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as a act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception. (Harold Loukes)
- Anyone who thinks only sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
- As soon as forever is through, I'll be over you. (Toto)
- Ask me why I keep on loving you when it's clear that you don't feel the same way for me...the problem is that as much as I can't force you to love me, I can't force myself to stop loving you.
- Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. (St. Augustine)
- A broken heart continues to beat...
- The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. (Mark Twain)
- Divorcées are people who have not achieved a good marriage--they are also people who would not settle for a bad one. (Paul Bohannan)
- Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
- Don't cry over anyone who won't cry over you.
- Don't hug me, it only makes me want to never let go. (Allison Mosher)
- Don't say you love me unless you mean it,
because I might do something like BELIEVE it!
- Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade. (Leo Buscaglia)
- Don't waste your time on a man/woman, who isn't willing to waste their time on you.
- A final comfort that is small, but not cold: The heart is the only broken instrument that works. (T.E. Kalem)
- Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back!
Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart
but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours.
- The greatest pain that comes with love is loving someone you can't have.
- The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love somebody else.
- Hearts aren't made to break they're made to love.
- Hearts are often broken by words left unspoken.
- Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable. (Tin Woodsman)
- Heaven hath no rage like love to hate turned,
Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned. (William Congreve)
- Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of. (D.M. Thomas)
- I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little ink drops, And posting it. (Amy Lowell)
- I didn't come this far just to walk away.
- I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone. (Javan)
- I dropped a tear in the ocean. The day you find it is the day I will stop missing you.
- I hate the day, because it lendeth light to see all things, but not my love to see. (Edmund Spenser)
- I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had. (From The Wonder Years)
- I stood on tiptoe gazing into the distance, interminably gazing at the road that had taken you... (Chi'in Chia's wife)
- I tell him everything, I mean EVERYTHING, so why can't I tell him he means everything to me?
- I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better. (Glenda Jackson)
- I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone. (Robin Williams)
- I wake to the absence of your presence after another night of sleeping alone.
- I would rather grieve over your absence than over you.(Antonio Porchia)
- I'd rather be lonely for someone than lonely with someone.
- I'm here, promising to be patient in exchange for finding you someday... (Karen Huefner)
- If my absence doesn't affect your life then my presence has no meaning in it.
- If someone betrays you once, it's his fault;
if he betrays you twice, it's your fault.
- If someone says you are too good for them--believe them.
- If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. (Dr. Phil)
- If you love someone, set them free.
If they return to you, then they will be yours for all of eternity.
If they do not return, then it was never meant to be.
- If your heart is the strongest muscle of the body, why does it break so easily?
- In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything,
and two minus one equals nothing. (Mignon McLaughlin)
- It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. (André Gide)
- It's better to lose your pride to the one you love, than to lose the one you love because of pride.
- It is easier to fake love than to hide it.
- It is not love that is blind, but jealousy. (Lawrence Durrell)
- It takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
- It's not love's going hurts my days
But that it went in little ways. (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
- Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure.
- Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive. (Havelock Ellis)
- Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to,
doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
- Just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other
And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.
- Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy; Even love unreturned has its rainbow.
- Living well really is the best revenge. Being miserable because of a bad or former relationship just might mean that the other person was right about you.
- Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet. (Abraham Lincoln)
- The loss of love is a terrible thing; they lie who say that death is worse.
- Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes just be an illusion.
- Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.
- Love is like a puzzle. When you're in love, all the pieces fit but when your heart gets broken, it takes a while to get everything back together.
- The love you can't have lasts the longest, feels the strongest and hurts the most.
- Loving is so short and forgetting so long.
- Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.
- Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart. (Margaret Cho)
- A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. (Edward de Bono)
- No man is worth your tears and the only one who is, will never make you cry.
- No matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.
- No matter how much you care, some people just don't care back.
- The one who loves the least, controls the relationship. (Robert Anthony)
- The past is not only that which happened but also that which could have happened but did not. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
- A pedestal is as much a prison as any small confined space.
- People change and forget to tell each other. (Lillian Hellman)
- Regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place.
- Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself putting it back together.
- A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me." (Plutarch)
- The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you.
- She had encountered one of the more devastating kinds of loneliness in existence: that of being in close contact with someone to whom she was a nonperson, and who thereby rendered her invisible and of no consequence. (Dorothy Gillman)
- The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence. (Edward Thomas)
- Sometimes I wish I were a little kid again, skinned knees are easier to fix than broken hearts.
- Sometimes promises break those who keep them.
- Sometimes we marry for the wrong reasons and then convince ourselves to stay for even worse ones. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
- Sometimes you have to choose between having a relationship and having a self.
- Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. (Mary Tyler Moore)
- There are things you'd love to hear that you would never hear from the person you would like to hear them from, but don't be so deaf as not to hear it from the one who says it from their heart.
- There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.
- 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. (Lord Tennyson)
- To offer someone friendship when love is in their heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst. (Frank Frankfort Moore)
- Two monologues do not make a dialogue. (Jeff Daly)
- The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands. (Alexander Penney)
- We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us. (Madame De Staël)
- We must be our own before we can be another's. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- What do you do when the only person who can make you stop crying is the person who made you cry?
- What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you. (Richard Wilbur)
- What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear. (Dag Hammarskjold)
- When I get angry, he gets angry at me for being angry. So he ignores me and I have to apologize to him for being angry while I'm still angry at him for something he did that I felt was wrong.
- When love is lost, do not bow your head in sadness; instead keep your head up high and gaze into heaven for that is where your broken heart has been sent to heal.
- When one is a stranger to oneself then one is a stranger to others too. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
- When the silence becomes deafening and it's all over but the shouting, it should be all over. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
- When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they 'don't understand' one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to. (Helen Rowland)
- When we bury feelings we also bury ourselves...It's like awarding someone sole custody of your happiness without even asking for visitation rights. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
- When you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.
- Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
- The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can't have them.
- To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
- You ask me why I keep on loving you when it's clear that you don't feel the same way for me...the problem is that as much as I can't force you to love me, I can't force myself to stop loving you.
- You can't make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. It is up to the other person to realize your worth.
- You don't die of a broken heart, you only wish you did. (Marilyn Peterson)
- You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough. (Frank Crane)
- We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love. (Sigmund Freud)
Without My Soul Mate
Now that you are gone,
I die a little every day.
Imperceptibly I fade away
The energy I felt that came through you
Is there no longer, you must feel it too.
The fire that consumed us burnt down too low.
The ashes of dawn to cold to renew
But we are crazed by becoming stars.
While beating out wings
Against invisible bars
Oh that I could love and touch and feel again
The hot passion of Life's river running through me
But I am cast on to a quieter shore
And there is nothing there that can renew me.
Does it show?
How I die a little every day.
Or am I dead already, and in my mind just play hope for nothing
Not even death.
Nor will except in senseless drink or laughter, the working of my fate.
I wait for what comes after.
Wherever I may stray on this senseless path,
I die a little, every day!
Butterflies
Butterflies don't fly
They just hitch hike the winds.
Butterflies are a lie
The deceit is a worm with wings.
A Work of Artifice
(Marge C. Piercy)
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.
Millions
A million words won't bring you back
I know because I've tried,
Neither will a million tears
I know because I've cried.
Comes the Dawn
(Veronica A. Shoffstall)
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to understand that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head held high and eyes opened,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.
You learn to build your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much,
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers,
And you learn that you really can endure,
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn . . .
With every goodbye comes the dawn.
Alone versus Lonely
(Denny Davis)
Solitude is something I usually enjoy
I rarely feel lonely when I am alone
But in that bed with him
I always felt isolated and sad
Now alone in bed I feel relaxed
And free to be me
Still sometimes sad and lonely
But no longer isolated
Whoever it was that said
"I'd rather be lonely for someone
Than lonely with someone"
knew what they were talking about.
The Secret Sits
(Robert Frost)
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
A Lifetime
It takes a minute to like someone,
an hour to love someone,
and a day to love someone . . .
but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.
A Scrapbook about a Failed Marriage
I've been scrapping for over a year and am caught up with everything--except a five year period--which is a lot, considering I am 22. Recently I have started to scrap my abusive marriage. I was with my husband from age fifteen to twenty-one and there were a lot of pictures. When I left, I stuffed everything in a box. I've heard about scrapping to cope with a death, but this seemed too morbid. One of the worst things is that the pictures seem so happy--but the memories are not always so. I avoided scrapping because it just didn't seem right; I didn't want to expend the energy; and it seemed like a waste of supplies.
Now that I have started it has been helpful, for all of the reasons I thought it would be a negative experience. I am coming to terms with the fact that this was a major part of my life that I cannot ignore, but the pictures are only part of the story--hence the importance of journaling. These pages are not for others; they are for me. I care about my scrapbooks, but I care about who I am and this project is helping.
I am not a psychologist, so I can not say that this would help anyone else. However, if you know someone that this email might help, please pass it along. It has been hard to do--but I am dealing with things using a hobby that is "safe" for me.
Divorce Album
(Goldie P)
The best thing I did was make a "Divorce Album". I recorded everything about our relationship, both good and bad, from first date to messages of support that friends sent me after the divorce was final.
This was a wonderful thing because:
* I know that I have all the wonderful good times and "in jokes" recorded, and they're sitting on a bookshelf. They aren't lost, but I don't have to hold on to them.
* It was a good way to process the bad stuff in my mind.
* It was a conversation starter with other scrappers. Each time I let someone look through the album and explained what I was doing, it got easier to tell.
* It was a project that kept me busy. I made a list of every place and activity that was significant to us -- from major things like our wedding to little things like getting Slurpies at 7-11, and then set out to get pictures to work with each one. Yes, I went to 7-11 and took pictures of the Slurpie machine. I put a lot of nervous energy into that book!
I told the whole story, even about the stuff that was not for public consumption. I wanted it all in there but I didn't want people to see everything. I handled this in two different ways.
Some topics got pocket pages, with several pages of typed journaling in the pocket. People normally just flipped past those pages without even taking the journaling out.
Other topics got flaps. I attached a piece of paper the size of page to the top only of the page, so you could lift it open. On the outside of the flap, I created a G- or PG-rated layout about the subject. Inside, I put all the nasty details. Then I put page protectors on with the flap closed. People never notice that these pages even have an inside, unless I take the page protectors off. (I took the page protectors off the day I showed it to my therapist. She thought it was a great album and work of healing.)
I remember how much it hurt when he left. I didn't believe this was possible, but I can tell you that it hurts much less now. Life DOES get better.
another Divorce Album Idea
She put the pics she had in and the journaling was very frank. As I recall she told about her decision to marry and then in a nutshell why it didn't work out. She intended it to be a lesson for her children. (She said she was too young and didn't realize what real marriage was about and wished she had listened to a cousin who had tried to talk her into waiting)
She also felt that this WAS a part of her life and should be scrapped and not swept under the rug. She titled the beginning page, "A Lesson in My Life". She kept decorating simple-just backed a photo or two on the pages. I think she ended up with about six sides of photos along with the story and she journaled who was who under the photos. She included group photos which of course had the groom in it and she had one where they were dancing because she looked beautiful in it! But she had mainly the family in her photos. She also threw away a lot with her ex in them. Those wedding photos included some of the last photos of her grandpa so those were special.
"I wish I'd known from the beginning that I was born a strong woman.
What a difference it would have made!
I wish I'd known that I was born a courageous woman;
I've spent so much of my life cowering . . .
I wish I'd known that I'd been born to take on the world;
I wouldn't have run from it for so long,
but run to it with open arms.
(from Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach)
back to top of page
Songs about Divorce
- After My Divorce - Looker (2008)
- Alimony - Tommy Tucker (1965)
- Alimony Blues - Bobby Radcliff (2006)
- All His Exes - Sylvie Lewis (2005)
- All My Ex's Live in Texas - George Strait (1987)
- Catered Divorce - Shannon Wollman (1998)
- D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette (1968)
- Divorce - Burlap to Cashmere (1998)
- Divorce Court - Paper the Operator (2008)
- Divorce Me C.O.D. - Darrell McCall (2006)
- Drive-By Divorce - Tim Wilson (1996)
- Farmer's Former Wife - Linda Hargrove (1973)
- Favorite Ex-Wife - Mark Adam Miller (2008)
- Final Joint Return - Jeanie Stahl (1987)
- Future Ex-Mrs. Jones, The - June Stearns (1968)
- Future Ex-Wife - Bret Michaels (2005)
- Goin' Through the Big D - Mark Chesnutt (1995)
- Grounds for Divorce - Big Business (2007)
- Happy Divorce Day - Christine Lavin (2005)
- High Cost of Leaving, The - Exile (1983)
- Hottest Ex in Texas - Becky Hobbs (2006)
- How's My Ex Treating You? - Jerry Lee Lewis (1962)
- I Just Can't Stay Married to You - Christy Lane (1979)
- I'm Single Again - Trina (2007)
- It's Great to Be Single Again - David Allan Coe (1984)
- Mark Round My Finger - Hawkshaw Hawkins (1953)
- Mental Cruelty - Buck Owens and Rose Maddox (1961)
- Merry Christmas to All My Exes - Marty Thompson (2004)
- My Ex-Best Friend - Frankie Avalon (1963)
- My Ex-Husband - Terese Genecco (2007)
- My Ex-Wife is Gonna Be My Next Wife - Justin Tubb (1999)
- My Next Ex-Wife - Wild T and the Spirit (2008)
- One Becomes Two - Rick Monroe (1999)
- Party of the Second Part, The - Hank Snow (1959)
- She's Single Again - Janie Fricke (1985)
- Single Again - Gary Stewart (2003)
- Suddenly Single - The Bama Band (1987)
- Till Divorce Do Us Part - Raymond Schultz (2000)
- Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago - Lee Ann Womack (2005)
- You Better Sit Down Kids - Cher (1967)
- Your Divorce Has Been Denied - P. Scott (2001)
Songs about Bad Marriages
- Friendless Marriage - Bruce Robison (2001)
- He Thinks He'll Keep Her - Mary Chapin Carpenter (1994)
- I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You - Lyle Lovett (1989)
- I Should Have Married You - Eddie Rabbitt (1975)
- I Wish I Was Single Again - Susan Ruth Brown (2001)
- I'd Rather Die for My Country Than Live with My Wife - McEnery (1944)
- Invisible Married Breakfast Blues - Leon Rosselson (1977)
- My World is Cavin' in - Leroy Van Dyke (1961)
- Ten Years of This - Gary Stewart (1977)
- Why Did I Get Married? - Tamika Scott (2007)
back to top of page