there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy

The line expresses a bleak, cyclical view of romantic entanglement: a new relationship can feel like rescue from the pain or chaos of the last, yet it carries within it the seeds of the next hurt. The “saving” is not pure deliverance but a temporary reprieve that quickly becomes another form of captivity or conflict. In Bukowski’s typical hard-edged, fatalistic register, desire and dependency are portrayed as self-perpetuating traps—people reach for love as an antidote to loneliness or damage, only to recreate the same patterns. The quote’s sting lies in its implication that the rescuer and the destroyer can be the same person, and that the narrator’s own choices help sustain the cycle.