Journey's Rest

[sage]

Most folks I know who quit are those who have been convinced beyond doubt that they will have unacceptable consequences if they continue. For every cold-turkey quitter, there probably are two or more who try, then give up and go back to smoking, because they are not convinced that the consequences will be unacceptable.

hmmm...for me (a cold turkey quitter) it wasn't the notion of unacceptable "consequences"...it was the notion that I no longer found "Sage = smoker" acceptable. IOW, it was all about self-image. I guess you could view that as consequences but it was more that I made a commitment to myself that I was no longer a smoker and breaking that commitment to ME was unacceptable. I actually decided to quit abut two months before I did (I waited until a school semester break) but for those two months I reinforced the notion in my head by calling myself "a nonsmoker who is having a cigarette". Not sure that makes any sense!

A parallel to that might be..how does NG make the commitment to himself to view himself as "faithful" or "monogamous" or "committed" and choose not to belie that. The added complexity here, though, is that of wanting to view oneself as "caring" or "not hurtful" and because of the OP there is no way to avoid hurting someone, no? So, I sometimes think that's the rub...in order to view themselves as non-hurtful, well, how do you achieve that when someone is gonna be hurt no matter what?

Sage