Let's talk about cognitive dissonance ...

[colditz]

My relationship with my children's father broke up because he lied about money and hit me, and I finally, after many years of misery, refused to tolerate it. But why did I tolerate it for as long as I did when I was miserable?

I believed that children need their parents to stay together and that I would not cope alone. The facts were that children do not need one parent to be abusing the other, and that my life would have been easier without him merrily fucking it up.

The stress caused by the gap between my own personal beliefs and the reality of my situation was causing an uncomfortable feeling, often described as cognitive dissonance.

Is this the reason that people who consider themselves fair minded nevertheless perpetuate an unfair system? Intelligent women who do all the housework and childcare 'because he goes to work' must see the difference between theirs and their husband's exhaustion levels - why do they accept it, and decide that 'going out to work is really hard' when they surely must remeber the time when they went out to work and had no home responsibilities as being a darned sight easier than the life they live now?

I think it's bcause cognitive dissonance is a very uncomfortable state of being, and if you cannot change your situation, you must change your way of thinking to bring it in line with your situation or suffer the misery of inner conflict.

Which brings me to the rejection of feminism.

Why do so many women reject feminism when it would clearly improve their lot to be treated fairly?

Is it because they cannot easily become fairly treated individuals, not without huge conflict and arguments in their home and at work, so they decide, unconsciously, to believe that they are already treated fairly? And therefore feminism is defunct in their minds.

Intersting.

Really liked your posts, Anniegetyourgun and HerBeatitude. I keep saying 'How true, how true!'

'I dont understand the people saying they take no responsibility for being with a man that doesnt help, dont want to work but then resent being at home.'

Sunny, I think there are lots of things it is impossible to understand about other people's relationships or decisions. And although most of us have more options nowadays, not everyone does have a choice or is aware they they have, which is the same thing. I think the important thing is not to blame them for the choices they do make - consciously or unconsciously.

I'd never heard of cognitive dissonance before reading this thread. Now I shall look out for it!

Sorry sunny, I think you are wrong.

I think people do change. People change all the time, they adapt and change in line with all the circumstances and influences around them. It is part of what makes us human.

You sound like a very strong determined person who does not mind if other people think your clothes are unironed.

However it is in the nature of being human that we want to be liked by other people and we like to live in society and conform to the norms of society. And many people will end up doing the ironing, not because they are weak-willed or have failed to set out expectations, but because on balance, at that moment, conforming to societal expectations is a stronger driver than making a stand and not doing the ironing.

And that is where some of these sticky issues arise from - when society says stay with your family, don't divorce, be thankful that you have a partner with a job, and live in an affluent society - despite the fact that it is making you unhappy.

Because you sit down time and time again and tell your partner that you are not happy, and he says he is...so tough luck on you.

An because you have been taught your whole life that men are the superior being, and because you have small children and you think you have to stay for them, and because your business goes with your house, and because there are no benefits to feed your children with (years ago)...and because and because and because....

And because his parents think he is the most impertant person in the house, and because society says that a woman that leaves her partner is not right in the head....

And because he is controlling you....and beating any slef esteem that you have left to a pulp.

I left eventually, but the things I have lost are huge...friends...my home...

I dont do everything my mum and dad do though. There are some things my dad expects that I would say fuck off to and the same with things my mum would expect. I am not a carbon copy of my parents and I have my own thought processes.

I live some wys similar to my parents and some ways way different but I am bound to we are a completely different generation and a lot of their ways of doing things are outdated so we just say shut up mum thats not how we do things anymore etc.

Sunny you have an answer for everything don't you?

If I had said fuck off to my father he would have beaten me until I was dead. I never opened my mouth in my birth home and he still found reasons to be violent. Do you have any idea what that does to a child's brain?

You have absolutely no emapthy whatsoever have you? And that goes for you too Quattro.

What an unbelievably depressing thread.

Gettingagrip - your situation is very different as it is from a long time ago when there wasnt the support systems there is today and the free childcare. The options to work if you want or not work, flexible hours etc. Nowadays we have all that and that is why it is different.

Quattro, there is something in the nature of long-term cognitive dissonance which means that you lose the strong sense of your own personal beliefs and therefore lose the sense of who you are (and what you like, and what makes you happy or unhappy).

And so you cannot just work out why, and then sort it. And when you lose your beliefs and values you judge yourself by other people's standards and you feel like a failure. Or you retain warped values such as "married people are happy" and because you are unhappy, you feel like a failure. And that grinds you further down.

gettingagrip. Totally agree with you.

Our circumstances and backgrounds are very different, yet I can empathise with what you are saying. Well done you, for getting a grip and for leaving and building a new life, a life that you want.

But the tragedy is Sunny, that it is NOT different. It is exactly the same!!! Despite all those sacrifices by previous generations of women, there are still women who come on a thread like this and tell someone like me that it was all my own fault anyway.

I thought this was so interesting when I read the first few posts. Now I just feel terrible.

You have obviously had a lovely upbringing which has left you with no hangups. I say again...lucky lucky you.

Sunny, you really don't understand do you? It is not the availability or lack of support systems, or childcare, or flexible working options. It is what happens to a person's perceptions and thoughts about themselves, their value, their self esteem.

As I said gettingagrip you were born in an era where things like this. In RL though how many children live with their real mum and dad. I dont know many. Things nowadays are very different it is uncommon to live with your biological father. I think it is normal to not live with your babies dad, not be married or be a single mum. I think its unusual to be any other way in my generation so it is a very different era. I dont want to make you feel bad about anything and many times in this thread but again it is a very different era nowadays.

There are numerous threads on the relationship forum of MN from women who are desperate...they start with a small post about something trivial. They are so unhappy, some are suicidal.

Gradually those wonderful, experienced and empathetic women (and men) on that forum get out of these poor women that they are in an abusive relationship. Some of them have been like that for years and years.

AND THEY DON'T REALISE!!!!

They know that something is not right..but they have been so beaten down IN THEIR BRAINS...that they are like rabbits in the headlights...they are paralysed.

Some are from abusive birth families...some are high flying women with good brains...

Cognitive dissonance is happening to them. And it fucks with your mind.

As I said...an answer for everything

And what do you mean...it's different nowadays??? This is nowadays and I am here...as are many, many women (and men) in my exact situation.

But according to you and others of your Ilk we have only ourselves to blame.

Presumably then you are saying that cognitive dissonance does not exist? Someone made it up for a bet.

Time I bowed out of the thread I think, but thank you very much to those who took the time to explain the problem.

I think you've presented an impossible dilemma. Hard to help those who can't/won't help themselves

Quattro...What a nasty, smug thing to say.

ok, so i have just been listening to the arctic monkeys. and the song 'mardy bum' (which, as a song, i love) seems to sum up everything that is wrong with male/female domestic relations.

whilst i get that coming home to someone who is constantly in a bad mood would ruin a relationship, it is once again based on the assumption that the woman is creating the demands & stress, by expecting him to get home on time, and being upset if he isn't there is no recognition that the man is just as responsible - he married/moved in with her, creating a situation where it is reasonable to expect a respectful & equal relationship. he is not living up to that expectation, but he is not willing to deal with the consequences of that.

if he treated his work/mates like that, he would get the same reaction and expect/accept it. - why is it NOT ok for a woman in a relationship to voice her unhappiness at being disregarded? because we're expected to put up & shut up, so that we don't lose our man.

seriously, i think i'm talking myself into living alone, perhaps with a couple of 'friends with benefits' to satisfy me. it's all too hard to work out how to co-exist without sexism creeping in.

are you all making tea for your fuck buddies/husbands? strange anomalous silence.

Well I put up with a distinct lack of domestic bliss for - there are different ways of measuring this, I'd say for this purpose 23 years, from moving in together to declaring that I was seeking a divorce. At first, of course, we did share things out as I believed we had agreed, and all was sweetness and light. XH would get those moods sometimes, but he couldn't help them (I told myself) because of his past. Most of the time he was gentle and easy-going, he made a lot of tea and he never laid a finger on me in anger. We had pets, we had children, I was the main (effectively sole) earner as well as doing pretty much all the household stuff, having the DCs exclusively whenever I was home, taking days off for their school appointments etc, and I did feel it was a bit of a strain, but H was clearly depressed and needed support and he was (here comes the cliche) lovely with the children. I didn't think I had a right to leave. I believed you stay and work things out; and, off and on, it seemed to work, for the most part. He even got a bit better about things like taking the DCs to the dentist himself, then they got bigger and helped with the chores, bless them. I thought it was all going to be lovely from now on, but still H had these little turns which I would have liked him to see a doctor about, but of course he wouldn't. If I had a problem it was my problem, there was nothing wrong with him.

One day it all got a bit too much and I started to realise he was doing a lot of this moodiness on purpose, and that the rest of it was way beyond the spectrum of normal. I looked round at the filthy mess he'd made of our house, got my ass in gear and cleaned up; then a couple of days later he was frantically moving it all back in again, worse than before. But there was always a good reason why there had to be a mess (eg he couldn't leave the tools in the garage because he hadn't got round to fitting the door, so they had to go under the dining table ). Although he was always too busy to do housework, take the DCs out anywhere or accompany me with walking the dogs (even after I'd been assaulted!), he never actually made any money, and indeed in a bad year my not-very-impressive wages subsidised his business. We'd always had a fairly regular sex life, but there were kind of... issues around it which I tended to blame on myself as I was kind of repressed and ignorant about the whole intimacy thing, but which I eventually realised were at least 50% down to him - only after he temporarily lost it for a couple of months, which kind of broke the spell.

He had massive insecurity issues, well he couldn't help that, poor dear, eventually he would learn to trust me. After 24 years (started before marriage, yes yes, now I know it's a red flag) of being accused of stuff I'd never dream of doing I eventually snapped a bit and am ashamed to say embarked on a brief (and far from satisfying) emotional affair with a guy over the internet. What astonished me was the intense relief I felt, knowing that I could no longer be falsely accused because I finally was actually doing something wrong! This was clearly not healthy. (The virtual OM was in fact a dick and it didn't last long, but I did get a glimpse of what it should be like to just have fun with someone who has no vested interest in bringing you down, and who stands beside you if someone's giving you grief instead of standing a little way away, looking at the sky, only to tell you off later for letting them talk to you like that... well, you get the picture. Probably.) I didn't like myself for it and didn't want to be that person. I couldn't squash it down when XH went on, and on, and on about affairs and unfaithfulness and "what I was up to" and I just wanted to "show him", like a rebellious child. I'd almost say he drove me to have it, but he didn't of course. I do claim he drove me to want it. So of course when I told him about it, as you do (well I'd always been honest with him, however often he called me a liar!) he said "this marriage is over then", and it felt fabulous, free... until he said he didn't mean it and he wanted us to try again. Back down to earth with a dull thud.

Well, I'd insisted a few months ago we went to Relate, XH kicked up a huge fuss to accompany a flat refusal, but as soon as I said ok, you're right, it is over, he said hey, why don't we get some counselling? I went along with it because I thought I had to try. But he behaved so awfully in front of the counsellor, the shock in her face and her reaction to what he was saying finally showed me, OMG, this is in fact mad stuff and my reactions to it are reasonable! Later I got individual counselling for myself and again, found it tremendously validating.

Reader, if you're still awake, I divorced him. I could do this thing I always thought I couldn't/shouldn't do. I still wasted a few months flagellating myself with guilt though. He's sick, he can't help it, the DCs don't want us to split up etc. I gathered up the last of my sanity and told myself it doesn't matter whether he can help it or not, I cannot live with this. I really had to get totally to rock bottom before giving up on it. You see it as strength, and so do I, now, but at the time it looked and felt like weakness. But I knew I couldn't fix him because I'd bloody tried, and had pretty much shot myself in the brain in the process.

I don't know what that adds to the debate, if anything. It's a glimpse inside the mind of someone who was deluded by love and duty for many, many years. And yet I am strong. I'm not stupid. You, you smug women, I don't dislike you but I am so very cross with you, you are the ones who are being stupid here, wilfully blind. You don't realise that you are bloody lucky to be where you are. You think you have been clever. Yes, we all thought we had been clever at the start, but some of us were wrong. I don't want something bad to happen to you to prove a point, but I wish you with all my heart to open your eyes and ears and learn empathy so that, if it ever happens to someone close to you, you can help them instead of going all "well you've only got yourself to blame you know" .

This is fucking massive and probably some of you have read the story before, but I'm going to post it anyway because I put so much energy into typing it, and my energy is precious to me these days. So read it or... don't.

tbh I agree with Stayfrosty, it is difficult to progress a discussion with people who simply don't have any knowledge or empathy and interest in learning. Sorry guys, I don't want to personalise things, but those of you who keep on going on about how wonderful your lives are and how easy it is to make sensible choices, are simply pulling the argument back again and again to a really low level and it's frustrating and boring. We've established that some posters have wonderful lives and have no idea how people who haven't had their advantages can make bad choices and no interest in learning how that can happen to intelligent women, now can we move on to discuss cognitive dissonance which exists in the lives of thousands of women who don't have such wonderful lives and haven't made such exemplary choices.

UA - maybe they've gone to warm the TV up in time for Merlin? I have!

Annie thanks for that post, there may be lurkers out there who also can't understand why on earth intelligent women get stuck in bad relationships, but aren't arrogant or smug enough to post that, so are open to learning from people who have been there.

the thing is, it doesn't have to be as 'obvious' as annie's situation. it can be very insiduous, but pervasive. e.g. just certain expectations are there, there doesn't have to be violence or shouting - how about the number of threads where women are fed up cos dh has gone out & left them home alone with a young baby? or fed up with being the one who has to ask for jobs to be done round the house, because he won't take the initiative?

of course, it is far less likely on mn that we hear of any men who have the same complaint, but i suspect there is definitely more women feeling this than men. it just seems to be that there's an underlying expectation that women are part of a family to provide service, men are there to be served.

and yet - as a society, we still espouse the value of equality. so, surely, it isn't just the women who feel the dissonance, but men as well? which possibly explains some of their 'excuses' - without outside intervention, they are unlikely to think 'well, equality is something i believe in, but i still think the mrs should have cooked a nicer dinner' - they are far more likely to think 'dinner was horrible, why doesn't she learn to cook?'. and who knows how much self-analysis it would take to move on to 'i should have cooked dinner for her'?

but how many of us would decide on a divorce just because he grumbles if dinner isn't cooked how he likes? in many other ways he could be a wonderful man, or talks about respecting his wife and appreciating her. after all, we can't expect perfection from each other, marriage requires some compromises, so we allow these low-level situations to continue.

and guess what our children are learning whilst it goes on around them?

I love this cartoon of cognitive dissonance in a work context

Thanks, HerBeatitude, it was hugely self-indulgent actually (cheaper than therapy!). But yeah, that was what it was supposed to be about. Just read it back and marked myself down on style ("kind of" three times in one sentence? ugh). Stayfrosty said it so much more succinctly!