And that’s required to end abuse. — “And as hard as this choice is, we break the pattern before the pattern breaks us.” ― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us The author highlights an important issue here, which is the vicious cycle of abuse. She showed how Lily, the protagonist, decides to break the pattern of abuse before it breaks her and her daughter. She had seen her mother suffer violence and hated her father, but this would not be her daughter’s case.