Top 90 Susan Forward Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “In fact, not only have a good many formerly abused children grown into nonabusing adults, but a number of these parents have great difficulty with even modest, nonphysical methods of disciplining their children. In rebellion against the pain of their own childhoods, these parents shy away both from setting limits and from enforcing them. This, too, can have a negative impact on a child’s development, because children need the security of boundaries.”

— Susan Forward

52. “Children have a right to be children. They have a right to spend their early years being playful, spontaneous, and irresponsible.”

— Susan Forward

53. “My father never did any of the things that my friends’ fathers did with them. We never tossed a football around or even watched games together. He would always say, “I don’t have time – maybe later,” but he always had time to sit around and get drunk.”

— Susan Forward

54. “When a child is not permitted to express her pain, one of the important, destructive messages she gets is that if she is feeling bad it is due to her own deficiencies. Coupled with this is likely the message that if she needs comfort, then she is ugly and repulsive to others.”

— Susan Forward

55. “Criticism is the fountainhead of control.”

— Susan Forward

56. “Most of us are very sensitive about our roles as mothers. If the misogynist feels his partner is betraying him for the sake of the children, he may begin to attack her adequacy as a mother. However, her maternal adequacy is rarely the real issue. The children are simply scapegoats for his anger. He is simply exploiting his partner’s fears of inadequacy to get her to acquiesce to his demands.”

— Susan Forward

57. “When we are children our families take care of our basic survival needs; they are also our first and most important sources of information about the world. It is from them that we learn how to think and feel about ourselves and what to expect from others. Our emotional foundations are created by the ways in which our parents treated us, the ways in which they treated each other, the kinds of messages their behavior communicated to us, and the ways in which we handled that information internally.”

— Susan Forward

58. “The healing process kicks into gear with with the words “This is what you did to me.” That statement is not gentle or polite; it’s absolutely direct. In fact, I know that seeing it might feel like a punch in the stomach. I deliberately removed the distancing veil of “objectivity” from the words “This is what you did” by adding ‘to me’.”

— Susan Forward

59. “The more compliant she is, the more her feelings and needs are ignored, the angrier the girl becomes, and then the more compliant she becomes in order to deal with the anger. This cycle is the track that every mistreated child runs.”

— Susan Forward

60. “Instead of promoting healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often with the belief that they are acting in their child’s best interest.”

— Susan Forward

61. “Secrets help toxic parents cope by turning their families into private little clubs to which no outsiders are admitted.”

— Susan Forward

62. “The more she sees him as the primary source of her good feelings, the more she will need him to be the center of her life. Remember, the misogynist’s jealousy and possessiveness have already seriously limited her world, which further enhances his importance to her. It is a vicious cycle. The more dependent she becomes, the more important he becomes. The more important he is, the more she is willing to give up for him, so that there is less left in her life that is free of him.”

— Susan Forward

63. “Fear in intimate relationships operates on several levels. On one level there are the survival fears – fear of making it financially on your own, fear of being poor, fear of being the sole provider and nurturer for your children, and fear of being alone – which keep women from leaving abusive relationships. But fear is present in the misogynistic relationship long before the woman begins to think of leaving.”

— Susan Forward

64. “Realizing that your mother couldn’t love you is one of the most painful discoveries you’ll ever make. You deserved to be cherished, but your mother was a disturbed, unhappy woman who took out her frustrations on you. And it wasn’t your fault.”

— Susan Forward

65. “In this way she perpetuated the pain she had experienced as a child. Not unexpectedly, her enormous accumulated rage had to find a way out, but since she was afraid to express it directly, her body and her moods expressed it for her: in the form of headaches, a knotted-up stomach, and depression.”

— Susan Forward

66. “I have a horrible time trying to figure out who I am, what I want, or what I need. I’m just beginning to figure it out. The hardest part is for me to like myself. Every time I try, I hear Daddy telling me what an awful kid I was.”

— Susan Forward

67. “It’s extremely frustrating when you’ve worked hard to get to the point of confrontation, but one or both of your parents are dead.”

— Susan Forward

68. “Money has always been the primary language of power.”

— Susan Forward

69. “We embrace the word no because it allows us to exercise some control over our lives, whereas yes is simply an acquiescence.”

— Susan Forward

70. “If their children misbehave, they’ll take away privileges, but they won’t assault their dignity or value.”

— Susan Forward

71. “You are accepting painful feelings as a part of your life, perhaps even rationalizing them as being good for you. It’s time to stop.”

— Susan Forward

72. “We all need to say what we think and feel. When we block the normal channels of expression, the emotions find other ways to manifest themselves. Some of those manifestations can be very destructive. When a woman in a misogynistic relationship disowns her angry feelings, they often return disguised as illnesses. For many women, suffering is the only way they know to express their rage.”

— Susan Forward

73. “Children need to make mistakes and discover that it’s not the end of the world. That’s how they gain the confidence to try new things in life. Toxic parents impose unobtainable goals, impossible expectations, and ever-changing rules on their children. They expect their children to respond with a degree of maturity that can come only from life experiences that are inaccessible to a child. Children are not miniature adults, but toxic parents expect them to act as if they were.”

— Susan Forward

74. “Once you understand what love is, you may come to the realization that your parents couldn’t or didn’t know how to be loving. This is one of the saddest truths you will ever have to accept. But when you clearly define and acknowledge your parents’ limitations, and the losses you suffered because of them, you open a door in your life for people who will love you the way you deserve to be loved – the real way.”

— Susan Forward

75. “In addition to threatening to physically harm his partner, the misogynist may threaten to harm himself or his children. He may threaten to cut off all the money, or he may threaten to find someone else and leave if his partner doesn’t do what he wants her to. The more a woman gives in to these threats and intimidations, the less power she has in the relationship. Once she feels helpless, her fears become even more overwhelming.”

— Susan Forward

76. “His father’s general mistrust of the future carried through to his thoughts on women. Like success, women would inevitably turn on you someday. He had a suspicion of women that bordered on paranoia. His son internalized these views as well.”

— Susan Forward

77. “Every time that I take out a woman, I hear my father’s voice saying, “Women love to trick men. They’ll take you for all you’ve got if you’re stupid enough to let them.”

— Susan Forward

78. “Co-dependent was used interchangeably with the term enabler – someone whose life was out of control because he or she was taking responsibility for “saving” a chemically dependent person. But in the past few years the definition of co-dependency has expanded to include all people who victimize themselves in the process of rescuing and being responsible for any compulsive, addicted, abusive, or excessively dependent person.”

— Susan Forward

79. “The misogynist’s control over his partner is like the roots of a plant: it spreads into many areas of her life. Her work, her interests, her friends, her children, and even her thoughts and feelings can be affected by his control. Her self-confidence and self-esteem can be so damaged as to bring about significant changes in the way she feels about herself and how she relates to the rest of the world.”

— Susan Forward

80. “Unfortunately, there is no magic key. The misogynist’s outbursts as well as his tenderness generally have little to do with how his partner is behaving. He is driven by his own inner demons. Therefore, there is no way to guarantee his good moods or eliminate his angry ones.”

— Susan Forward

81. “An even darker side to the behavior of the needy, victim mother is that she may use her son as a sacrificial lamb. In addition to not protecting him from his abusive father, she may actually place him between herself and her husband in order to deflect some of his wrath away from her.”

— Susan Forward

82. “Denying or repressing strong emotions doesn’t eliminate them. Instead, they get displaced or stored up.”

— Susan Forward

83. “We can only speculate why, but physically abusive parents seem to share certain characteristics. First, they have an appalling lack of impulse control.”

— Susan Forward

84. “The hope that he’ll change, the search for the magic key, and the intensity of her love all combine to place the woman in a very vulnerable position. Her acceptance of her partner’s insults, humiliations, and scare tactics has given him enormous power over her: he can now control her behavior and feelings by the mere switch of a mood. This can be a terrifying position for her.”

— Susan Forward

85. “It’s a mistake to think that if we don’t remember or don’t acknowledge painful experiences they will just disappear. In fact, great damage is done to us by those phantoms and pieces of memories that swim around in the unconscious, the part of us that never forgets. Unpleasant experiences gain power over us by being denied or hidden, but they can be made to relinquish that power when they are brought out in the open.”

— Susan Forward

86. “Most people have a very difficult time handling anger, even their own. When anger is directed at you, it creates an atmosphere of tremendous tension. With the misogynist, the shouting usually includes insults and attacks on you, which make the experience doubly painful. These verbal assaults can be as frightening and demoralizing as implied threats of physical violence.”

— Susan Forward

87. “The great common denominator among women with unloving mothers is the longing for validation – to find someone who will say, “Yes, what you experienced really happened. Yes, your feelings are justified. I understand.”

— Susan Forward

88. “Remember, accepting blame is a survival tool for abused children. They keep the myth of the good family alive by believing that they – not their parents – are bad. This belief lies at the core of virtually all self-defeating behavior patterns in adults who were abused as children.”

— Susan Forward

89. “The mother myth gives great cover to unloving mothers, who far too often operate undisturbed while their husbands, other family members, and society deflect any criticism or scrutiny aimed at them.”

— Susan Forward

90. “Or, paradoxically, they may swing to the other extreme and become overly trusting, feeling so desperate to find someone who cares for them that they may ignore warning signs and find themselves involved with people who will victimize them again.”

— Susan Forward

91. “A little girl wo was criticized or ignored or abused or stifled by an unloving mother becomes an adult who tells herself she’ll never be good enough or lovable enough, never smart or pretty or acceptable enough to deserve success and happiness. Because if you really were worthy of respect and affection, a voice whispers inside, your mother would’ve given them to you.”

— Susan Forward

92. “I came to realise that there are two facets to forgiveness: giving up the need for revenge, and absolving the guilty party of responsibility.”

— Susan Forward

93. “Punishers don’t see themselves as punishing, but rather as maintaining order or keeping a firm hand on things or doing “what’s right” or letting us know they can’t be pushed around. They see themselves as strong and in charge. If their behavior hurts us, so be it. The end justifies the means.”

— Susan Forward

94. “When we are thwarted, frustrated, and punished way out of proportion to what we’ve done, it’s inevitable that enormous anger builds inside us.”

— Susan Forward

95. “I take a stand for what I believe in. I don’t let fear run my life. I confront people who have injured me. I define who I am rather then being defined by other people. I keep the promises I make to myself. I protect my physical and emotional health. I don’t betray other people. I tell the truth.”

— Susan Forward

96. “Charlene had controlled Karen for so long, she had every reason to believe her daughter would buckle, that she’d never have to follow through on her threats.”

— Susan Forward