I am writing to inform have just received the latest statistics from our devilish Bureau of Encouraging Divorce and Breakups (BoEDB), and am overjoyed to report the numbers are most encouraging. One out of two marriages entered into today is projected to fail – a great tribute to our tireless work and dedication. Yet we need to continue to continuously improve our methods, and it is best not to become too complacent.
I hear you are currently attending a patient whose spouse has left to live with another woman. Most excellently. I myself have successfully navigated such a situation in the past. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues have experienced the catastrophy that their patients reunited, and are now actually working on their marriage. To ensure that this calamity does not occur with your own patient, there are a few obvious pitfalls to be avoided, that I, your ever-loving Uncle, will gladly share with you below.
First of all – discourage your patient to “hang in there”. This may sound trivial, but it may mean the difference between saving the marriage, and handing the OP her spouse on a platter. My own patient luckily made that mistake. She was within inches of success when she confronted him, and forced him to make a “choice”. If she had only waited a little longer, she would at least have had a chance to fight for her marriage, because the OP was in fact getting so annoyed with the man’s indecision and wavering that she was ready to leave herself. Humans are odd - when they feel most that they need to DO SOMETHING NOW, when every nerve ending screams for action, that is the time for them to do nothing. Keep this knowledge from her as much as you possibly can, and focus instead on encouraging her to “listening to her feelings”. That always goes down well with them. If they should discover that their feelings are actually a safe indicator of nothing at all, we should be in great trouble. Luckily, that will never happen.
The second thing is discourage the LBS to “accept responsibility”. Make sure they maintain, from beginning to end, that they’d had a picture book marriage, only disrupted by the WA’s midlife crisis or affair, thus making it all their fault. The advantage is obvious: to the WA, this does not make the idea of coming home very appealing. He or she then invisions a life where the affair will be used against them at any opportunity, that they’ll have to say “mea culpa” day and night, and that the “issues” they had with the marriage will still be there. Remember the WA has a list of “reasons” in their head as to why they needed to leave, rational or not. It is best the LBS focus on the irrational aspect, and not validate their feelings. A LBS who conveys the sentiment “we both make mistakes, and we’ll both work on it” will do much towards relieving the other’s sense of guilt and despair, often a major factor in keeping them apart. That must be avoided at all cost.
Do not, under any circumstances, let the idea of making “positive changes” enter your patient’s mind. If the patient has a bad body image, perhaps even a few excess pounds, whisper into their ears that it is no wonder their spouse left such an unattractive person. Especially women fall for that line every time, no matter how unrealistic it is. Be careful, though, that she doesn’t decide to “do something about it”, and, the Enemy forbid, joins a gym. If your patient shows signs of such undesirable activity, try to convince her “his love for me shouldn’t be based on appearances”, and make her forget she wanted to do it for her own self-confidence and well-being. Physical exercise is the mother of all Evils for our purposes, because it induces a sense of energetic contentment that does not correlate at all with the feeling of worthlessness and depression we want to cultivate. Trust me, the human mind is quite capable of supporting two contradictory statements side by side, which makes our work so much easier.
Encourage her to dwell on her situation as much as possible, and direct her away from people or books that might inspire her to reconnect with old friends, take up new hobbies, interact positively with her children, and make her happiness less dependent on the relationship. Happy people are attractive – always a dangerous thing for us.
One final warning: do not let them “take the high road”. Temper tantrums and screaming matches should be encouraged, as the WA will likely return the favour (you may want to coordinate a fight with the fellow fiend in charge of the WA), and we are another step closer to our ultimate goal. The same goes for name-callings and accusations, which are positively delightful to our ears. The worst possible scenario, the thing most to be avoided is for them to retain a degree of cordiality towards each other, or, the Enemy forbid, even “work on their friendship”. Between two spouses that actually put past differences aside, and concentrate on what drew them together in the first place as friends, any number of dreadful things can happen.
Wishing you the best success in your endeavours, I remain, et cetera, et cetera,
