I've been wanting to do this for a long time, just cause there are some great resources I've found--besides of course DB!--that have, like DB and DR, brought me a certain amount of peace and taught me a lot about love I didn't know.
1. Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
I actually read this book prior to my exH leaving, but didn't see how it applied to my situation until after he announced he was leaving (talk about justifying my own foolish beliefs!) If anyone struggles with understanding how their WAS could be so cruel/could seem to happily be making the biggest blunders of their lives/are burning every bridge behind them into smoke and ash, this book will provide a lot of comfort, empathy, understanding, and hopefully peace.
This book explains the "why" of several DB concepts--including why reducing your WAS guilt can help your sitch vs. hinder it--plus a lot that are missing from the book, but are found on this board--such as clear explanations of the "script". There is a whole chapter on marriage & love. Here's an excerpt:
Quote:
The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions — especially the wrong ones — is an unpleasant feeling that Festinger called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as "Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me" and "I smoke two packs a day." Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn't really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways.
...Thanks to the revisionist power of memory to justify our decisions, by the time many couples divorce, they can't remember why they married. It's as if they have had a nonsurgical lobotomy that excised the happy memories of how each partner once felt toward the other. Over and over we have heard people say, "I knew the week after the wedding I'd made a terrible mistake." "But why did you have three children and stay together for the next twenty-seven years?" "Oh, I don't know; I just felt obligated, I guess."...And the pitiless remark said by many a departing spouse after twenty or thirty years, "I never loved you."
The cruelty of that last particular lie is commensurate with the teller's need to justify his or her behavior...
When the divorce is wrenching, momentous, and costly, and especially when one partner wants the separation and the other does not, both sides will feel an amalgam of painful emotions. On addition to the anger, anguish, hurt and grief that almost inevitable accompany divorce, these couples will also feel the pain of dissonance.
...If you are the one who is leaving, you also have dissonance to reduce, to justify the pain you are inflicting on someone you once loved. Because you are a good person, and a good person doesn't hurt another, your partner must have deserved your rejection, perhaps even more than you realized. Observers of divorcing couples are often baffled by what seems like unreasonable vindictiveness on the part of the person who initiated the separation; what they are observing is dissonance in action. A friend of ours, lamenting her son's divorce, said: "I don't understand my DIL. She left my son for another man who adores her, but she won't marry him or work full-time just so that my son has to keep paying her alimony. My son has had to take a job he doesn't like to afford her demands. Given that she's the one who left, and that she has another relationship, the way she treats my son seems inexplicable cruel and vengeful." From the DIL's standpoint, however, her behavior towards her ex is perfectly justifiable. If he were such a good guy, she's still be with him, wouldn't she?"
I found this website because of extensive research I undertook to understand my exH's chemical imbalance, and got the surprise bonus of this information. They apparently have books (which I haven't read), but you can find out pretty much everything you need to know just reading their huge, but unwieldy website. Look under the science section first (left nav from above page).
The website is about how lust and pair bonding are two--competing--systems in our brains. As social animals, we want to bond with others for life--and reap lots of documented health benefits if we do. But we also have a system that works on behalf of our "selfish genes" that tires of old partners and seek new. This website explains that ALL love is dependent on biochemistry, even our own with our spouses.
Like DB, there are very hands-on, concrete ideas for both upping pair-bonding (these correspond very closely to things in DB and the Love Languages Books) and keeping or reigniting the flame that you and your spouse had/have indefinitely (this was all pretty new and challenging stuff for me).
But this website was basically one "ah ha!" moment after the other for me as well. However, it's poorly constructed. I would stick to reading a lot of the science section articles first, and then move on to other stuff. It's worth it, though. I think they are actually light years ahead of most other people on this stuff. They are correctly interpreting the latest brain science AND drawing on a lot of ancient wisdom and practices. I can't wait to have the opportunity to try to apply some of the techniques in a new relationship.
3. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Read this book if you are depressed, read it if you are a woman, just read it...but maybe don't read the final third of the book. The end is a MAJOR disappointment--I'm telling you. It's like you're walking hand-in-hand with yourself through soul-searing depression in Part 1, take this amazing spiritual journey towards happiness and enlightenment in Part 2--this part is so incredible, mine is completely underlined and dog-eared and revisited constantly--and then end up with a guy that makes your skin crawl in Part 3. Do not advance to part three, either in real life or in the book!!! But the rest of the book is amazing. Really and truly.
Last edited by iamlost; 05/21/0911:19 PM.
It is in the shelter of each other that people live.--Irish proverb
