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.

Fantastic post annie. I understand completely and you write it out beautifully. Also, without bitterness.
There is probably some lurking in there, but your post is full of insight and loveliness.

This is better, on topic.
Very good post Annie. That sounds so hard.
Gettingagrip too.

My own situation is not so extreme, and I think is how many women find themselves.

Yesterday DH was out of the house 7am - 10pm working his awful dayjob and his awesome creative job, needed to get showered and iron his clothes for today to be up at 6, so asked if I'd get his dinner on.
I love him and wasn't doing anything urgent.
Of course I got his dinner ready.

But when I step back, DH was out all day, including his creative exciting work, and I've been grocery shopping, cleaning, playing Duplo etc. and basically stayed up to get his dinner ready.

If I'd already had a career when I got pregnant, then I'm sure things might be different now, but I didn't have a job to return to, I became very isolated and meanwhile, DH career progressed.

There was an interesting theory on adaptation someone explained to me years ago in reference to something else, that I'll try and explain now

At each decision point we make the best choice available to us.
But we rarely make great leaps, rather conitnuing with the immediate actions available.
A visual representation of this is two hills near each other.

If we stand at the bottom of one hill and need to go up, say, a flood is coming - the easiest decision to make is to step higher on that hill. We carry on and end up climbing that mountain.
Now if it turns out that the hill we stand on is only 10 feet tall and the one nearby is 20 feet tall, but we're already at the top, it's a risky action to go down in order to climb the 20 feet high hill.

We may have taken the best decision available to us at the time, but find ourselves in a less than ideal position.

wasting, I think you are right about most dissonance occuring in situations that are not extreme, after all that is the nature of compromise.

In my current relationship I feel equal and empowered. There are compromises that I make (I am sure we both do). But I am much more aware of what is happening, and the point at which a compromise might feel like a step too far. And because I feel confident and secure I can take action to address it.

In my previous marriage it was like being on a slippery slope. I continued and continued to compromise until the life I was living and my beliefs about who I was / had been were so far apart that things became untenable.

wasting - yes, i'm sure that's how it happens. dh & i both want me to have a career, but over the years, his work has paid more, so when something had to give, it's been my job, as his brought in more money. it made sense at the time.

now i find myself thousands of miles from home, no job, and totally reliant on him. we are taking steps to change this, but it is taking time (due to immigration laws & the practicalities of job fining), and i am stuck here as a SAHM, with dd at school & life is v easy - too easy - i am bored & need some change to happen.

I think the people on here saying problems all boil down to women's bad choices, or lack of drive or whatever, have cognitive dissonance.
People who don't see the need for feminism have cognitive dissonance.

Footlong came on here and told everyone his wife wasn't working, that she was lucky to have a washing machine ( because, you know, heaven forbid he consider manual clothes-washing to have been his job or the fact that manual labour in the home was relegated to women because they were oppressed, not because of evolution) , and that if she complained about it she was spoilt.

Sunny, has missed the point, either on purpose or because she can't face facts. It is not Footlong's wife's fault that he regards SAHMing as being insignificant compared to his Very Important job. It's society's fault. And it's no good telling women they should get a job if they don't like the way SAHMs are treated, for example, when women should be getting angry that they are paid 6 pound an hour to look after up to eight kids. That's revolutionary stuff we're talking about. NO man alive would do sunny's job.

SO telling women to eat up their pills and put on a happy face doesn't cut it, sunny, because that is cognitive dissonance. That's why so many women stay in abusive relationships, or put up with really hard labour, like your job, but feel sorry for their husbands , or men in general or compare themselves to women in the third world in order to convince themselves that their life is perfect.
NObody's life is perfect, but if society tells me that cleaning up an old man's shit every morning elevates my status higher than someone taking care of their own children then we have a BIG problem with society.

Annie, I see a lot of my mother in your story. That's why she stayed married to my dad for so long, running away from the truth by becoming a workaholic (sorry you didn't do that part). But to say this is not a feminist issue like sunny and Ormrenewed is absurd, or to say it's the fault of the individual women is even more absurd.

so what is the answer?

i don't want to live alone for the rest of my life, but i don't want to live with cognitive dissonance either. given that so much of this develops as relationships change & develop, then how do we prevent this from happening?

To not be in denial is the first step. People who have cognitive dissonance cannot face reality and therefore will never make changes because their identity is wrapped up in the lie that their life is perfect. So if you can see problems, then you can change them. All that happens is depression/anger etc.
We are both in exactly the same situation, I think. We have young children and that has to be factored in. If I was single, I wouldn't be married, would never have even got married if I hadn't wanted children. I love DH, he is not sexist, but when children are involved compromises have to be made. U suppose you have to know what your boundaries are. Now I have kids the loss of economic independance is a short-term compromise. So as long as you know where you are mentally, then you're fine. YOu say you're bored. Recognizing this is hugely important: that's where your drive to do something will come from. Pretending everything is ok is when the problems arise IMO

sorry, my second line was :if you pretend there are no problems and act like it's all peachy then it will come in other ways, be that depression or whatever.

re. living alone. I would weigh up the pros and cons, but if after the kids had grown up I felt that marriage was taking more out of me than it was giving, I wouldn't have a problem with starting a new life alone

Hello sorry to eople I offended just got back from clubbing and checking this on facebook. To sakura I work with men who do my job for 6 quid an hour they love it cause its a laigh. DOdnt mean to offend anyone but often havet got skills to put across what I mean. I am commiting asin of mumsnet as postingin text speak. I just want people to know most husbands are lovely and marriage is a wonderful thing. I dont mean to offend annie or geta grip apolgies didnt mean anything but in a round about way I was trying to say do what meakes you happy whatever that meay be and ignore society but I never want to make anyone feel bad I am not that type of person. Apolofgies especially if this doesnt make sense was playing on my mind when I was out but dont mean anything by it. All of you are wonderful, special people believe in yourselves and valium if you are ever in the area you are welcome to my baby group. Aplogies good night xxxxx

sorrry that makes no sense will make sense of it at lunch tomo but apoligies to all who took things wrong way. tahjsks goodnight. also first line was meant to say checking this and facebokk. night

"I just want people to know most husbands are lovely and marriage is a wonderful thing"

Yeah..but being single is a LOT more fun. my teenage years and early twenties were a laugh. Travel at the drop of a hat, can shag who you like, take a work posting anywhere in the world. why on earth would i have given that up?? why would any woman? the answer, in my case was...babies.

I fell in love with DH in the usual way, great sex, nice person, knew he'd be a good dad, though not the most exciting man in the world. I realised it would have been a big mistake to marry the exciting men I'd been in love with, or the beautiful men for that matter. If I hadn't wanted children, though, we'd have just cohabited until it fizzled out.
I find monogamy extremely difficult, but I am 100% faithful to DH, because i expect the same from him. So women lose a lot when they marry, but if the are with a man who treats them with respect and appreciates their work in raising their children, then they can gain a lot too. Right now, my marriage is worth sticking with.
will it be worth it when the kids aren't as dependant? I can't answer that right now. i don't know if i should stay with someone till death do us part if it means I have to sacrifice an entire side of me that is stifled by wifework. I do NOT want to be 50 and having sex once a month. HOw dull and dreary. If it gets to that I'll get my own flat. DH might fancy a change by then too, who knows.
But no way am I going to pretend that being married is the best thing ever because iit's not. i think you're lacking in imagination if you think it is. marriage is useful and important if you want to raise children, but that's about it IMHO

to clarify: I have sex more than once a month BTW , but I can see how that sort of thing might happen if you've been with the same person for 30 years or so. it might not be a bad thing for everyone, but i think that that, coupled with other things, might tip me into deciding that not being married is better than being married.

Annie, sorry (my english is rubbish) I know you didn't say your situation wasn't a feminist issue. I think it is, but others on here don't. I think many many women have experienced something similar to you and that makes it political

It's basically all the Big Lie - that women need men to look after them and that a single woman is a freak and a failure when time and time again studies show that the happiest people are married/partnered men (who have someone to do their shitwork) and single women (not having to do someone else's shitwork). This is why there is so much stuff about how awful it is to be a single woman or a single mum, and how hard it is to find and 'keep' a man - because society on the whole wants women to think that 'keeping' a man is the most important thing in the world. ALl the opposition to feminism is grounded in the same place - the terrible fear that women will one day all refuse to do the shitwork out of 'love' or fear of abandonment and the men will have to do it themselves

Actually that's a point, wastingaway - the 1950s studies showed that the less the disincentive, the more cognitive dissonance kicked in. So you're likely to experience more low-level kidding yourself when things aren't so much awful as mildly unsatisfactory. Oddly, it's harder to get out of a less-than-ideal situation than a truly shit one. As you saw, mine had to get truly shit before I found the clear-sightedness to get the hell out of it. If he'd ever hit me there would have been no problem, I'd have walked. But it was never "bad enough". That's why I let it ratchet up over the years.

If you say to one woman, "Why do you stay when he knocks you about?" she'll say "because I'm afraid of what he'll do if I try to leave". You give her the number for Women's Aid, she finds out how to leave and live without fear, the only obstacle is finding the courage and opportunity to do it.

If you say to another woman, "Why do you stay when he is always complaining and belittling you?", you get rationalisation. "He makes a nice cup of tea", "he looks after my car", "he can't help it, he's depressed" and the good old "the kids adore him". It comes from years of looking on the bright side, always making the best of not-quite-good-enough, till you finally convince yourself that you really can't and shouldn't expect better. Then, you twit, you go around telling your daughters the same. We should not want our precious DCs to settle for not-quite-good-enough. We should want them to strive always for the best that can be achieved, no? And this has to start with seeing things as they really are.

Sunny, don't let it spoil your day. You sound like you have everything sussed. Unfortunately not everyone has your self-esteem.

Sakura...that is what I have done, in essence. I had my children and then I left. The sad thing is that I think the children would have been less damaged by the split had they been about ten years younger than they were. Although we are all ok now, it has not been easy. For one child in particular.

Ironically, my eyes were opened to the situation I had got into when my younger child was a baby. My MIL attacked me verbally and told me that it was all my own fault that my parents were not very nice to me when I was a child, and had I ever considered that it was me not them.

That was 18 years ago now, and is still with me as though it were yesterday.

That was the moment I should have got the kids and gone. Instead, I thought I should stay in that toxic atmosphere 'for the children's sake'! Talk about cognitive dissonance!

The years after that incident got harder and harder, as the family business meant that were very much all together with the ILs. And of course my depression got worse and worse.

I credit my wake-up call with the onset of menopause, and the changing hormones in my body, which meant I no longer had all that oestrogen telling me I had to stay for the sake of my children.

Menopause is the best thing since the proverbial sliced bread!

Also I had spent ten years getting some qualifications (whilst working full time and to the derision of the family)so that I could be free of the family and earn my own living.

I was also very lucky that I had a very good lawyer and barrister, and that my exH showed his arrogance in court, and so I was awarded a good settlement. Mind you, they were only really ordered to pay me what I had put into the marriage over all those years.

I am now looking for a friend with benefits! It's definitely the way forward! What to do when you have small children to support I have no idea. I havn't thought that one through yet.

yes, Annie, then couple that with SGB's point that society conspires to convince women they're better off married, (when they're not), or that divorced women are social outcasts etc and you get many reasons why women convince themselves they're lucky to have a man at all. Quite clever really, because in reality it's the man who's got lucky- men are fragile- but the media doesn't tell you that.
So the low level nagging of "Is this the best life I can have, considering I've only got one laugh" is most probably covered up with cognitive dissonance, depression and boredom. I reckon lots of women self-medicate with shopping and alcohol

"My MIL attacked me verbally and told me that it was all my own fault that my parents were not very nice to me when I was a child, and had I ever considered that it was me not them. "

Oh-my-God, you poor thing

Annie...yes that is spot on....when does it get so bad that you have to leave? It's obvious if he is hitting you every day...but if you are just a bit pissed-off...well what then?

And no..don't model not-quite-good-enough to our children.

It's ok Sakura...I am fine now...

considering I've only got one life

you sound okay, gettingagrip

I do think hormones have a roll to play in womens' thinking. The hormones surging around your body when you are young and want children are very different to those that drive you when you are post-menopausal.