In the book It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover incorporates violence in the story line from the start of a young age into the adulthood of Lily Bloom’s perspective. Violence is Lily’s life is a repeating obstacle when dealing with someone she loves. By using scenes of violence, Hoover conveys a message that people have to be strong and overcome the point of weakness that an abusive partner can put on a relationship.

Hoover begins by displaying first person experiences that Lily faces from her childhood which highlights her mother dealing with the violence that Lily’s father expresses. Lily reads her notes that she wrote as a child, displaying the message within her experiences. The abuse her father portrays is a foreshadow of what Lily’s love interest soon displays, and this is an eye opener because Lily knows she doesn’t want to go down the same path her mom did. When Lily first meets Ryle, her now ex-husband, she thought he was very comforting and loving. She knew that he wasn’t a long-term relationship kind of guy, but when they started to fall in love with each other, there was no thought about ending their relationship. Ryle had become a very misleading guy. The minute something went wrong, he lost his temper and Lily got the consequences of it. The first time violence from Ryle struck her, she didn’t know what to do. She was in complete shock. Love took over and she stayed with him, not knowing that his actions would later repeat itself. This evidence recycles on the goal Lily had of not letting someone and letting herself get weak by sticking around. Whenever Lily would recollect on the way her mother was treated, she would despise the way her father got away with it all. She was mad that her mother didn’t leave her father, and now as she finds out that she is pregnant with Ryle’s child, she doesn’t want to put her child through what she went through herself.

Consequently, since Lily didn’t leave Ryle soon enough after the assaults, it only made it harder for her to leave him, and more aggression came towards her as more time together passed along. Now that there is a child involved in their lives, it made the extent of the separation much deeper. Lily never felt comfortable being alone around Ryle after their divorce because she knew he didn’t agree with it, and she didn’t know if something else would trigger his anger. The story grows with her fear and more of their relationship is revealed to other characters. Lily has become very close with Ryles' sister, Alyssa. She was a coworker, neighbor, and sister-in-law. She never wanted to tell Alyssa about the way her own brother would act, but when the abuse became more noticeable to the public eye she knew that Alyssa would catch on. Alyssa knew how her brother was; she loved Ryle but she was always on Lily’s side because being his sister and knowing the way he is doesn’t make his actions right. Furthermore, though, acts of violence in a relationship should be a red flag as to leaving the situation, due to the way love is associated between these characters, internal conflictions make a problem harder to interpret for oneself. 

Ultimately, Colleen Hoover builds in scenes of violence while sending a message that love is an obstacle within itself, and dealing with abuse from the ones you love creates an internal weakness of making the right decision of being strong and putting those people aside.