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.

Yes being single in your 50s is much better than being married to a man who sits in front of the tv the whole time, and has no desire to do anything else.

I was also facing the prospect of looking after my mother, his mother and father, his aunt, and him as he, and they, all had physical problems. As his family had treated me appallingly, the thought of having all those nasty people to look after , and nothing else on the horizon scared me silly.

That may make me sound selfish, but I have no problems looking after my own mother.

There are downsides though to being single in your 50s. And going through a divorce with a nasty piece of work is very stressful. However, out the other side, I am glad every day that I finally had the strength to do it.

I did lose many friends though. But I can now go out and find new ones! I can entertain in my home, something I could never do before, due to miserable exH putting a damper on everything.

And I don't have to justify myself 24/7, which is so unbearably soul destroying.

With regard to when is the best time to leave...I wish I had done it when the children were very small. I think if they grow up with a single mother, that is their normality. But I do know how difficult it is to leave with small children.

Sunny...the more I read of your posts, the more I think you have it sussed.

but sunny's posts are not about cognitive dissonance, which is the point of this thread. They are about how great her marriage is and if we all tried harder, or in my case, compromised more, then we would be happy. THis is the definition of cognitive dissonance.
Like when she told me "See compromise in your life isnt always bad " when she knew nothing about my marriage and it transpires I have a more equal relationship than her when it comes to the shitwork. So what is she doing here? It looks to me like she's trying to convince everyone her marriage is perfect...well why does she have to convince anyone of that? Especially a woman who is telling her that she is not happy in her marriage. I don'T get it. Smacks of protesting too much to me. IF you're that happy why do you need to post all smug on a topic where people are struggling in their marriages ?

I just mean all along it turns out that sunny thinks people argue over the chores, for example, when in fact in my marriage we don'T. NOt after I got it sorted. So all the things sunny thinks makes her "lucky", like travelling and going out etc are things I take for granted as an Adult. She makes it sound as though she has got a great marriage because she can do all these things. I don'T get it.

Can I also add, credit to Sunny's DH too. There's a certain kind of ignorant lout who'd be trying to tell him he's not a "real man" because he and his wife take turns going out and managing the house and kid, he would rather spend time with his baby than at work, and he is studying to join a caring profession (mind you a very masculine caring profession, he'll need to be bloody tough!). The louts would be wrong, though. A man shouldn't be afraid to do these things, because he gets more out of life through putting more in. He's doing what he believes is right and he can be comfortable in his skin. I suspect that the ones who claim that getting bladdered with their mates every night and refusing to lift a finger in their house is somehow more masculine are covering up the shame they ought to feel for not doing something a bit more useful with their lives. Which I think is where we came in...

The point of my posts Sakura is that a person doesnt have to put up with getting the raw end of the deal and regardless of what you say it is not how it is in normal marriages. If you say it is normal then more women will put up with substandard treatment.

I dont see how I am saying my marriage is perfect we struggle with money, work, home life etc and all of my single parent friends have to cope with the same. One is not neccessarily better than the other but the point is if you are in relationship/marriage regardless of what the stats you posted say, a woman or a man shouldnt have to put up with a spouse who doesnt appreciate them or contribute equally.

There are marriages that are awful and there should be no shame in leaving them but on the other hand a marriage shouldnt be seen as something that just benefits a man, so women who find themselves in that situation dont put up with it and stand up for yourselves.

I am sorry you took it any other way sakura but I just mean that life is not and will never be perfect in every way.

sunny, you have misunderstood my posts. WHen I hear about how much work you do I feel sorry for you. You do the cooking and all the cleaning too by the sounds of it. So in my eyes you have got a raw deal and are trying to justify it.

I have put a stop to all that. I don't get the raw deal. If your house ends up in squalor because you don't have time then your husband isn't doing as much as he should IMHO.

So why are you on here telling me I've got the raw end of a deal somewhere?

I am not trying to telling you that you have the raw end of any deal Sakura. I think your husband sounds like a good man who helps and works and thinks of you a lot from your posts. He sounds like a very nice person and thoughtful, caring husband. I was just making suggestions for things you could do around your social life which I thought was the difficult bit you were facing.

Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick but just saying there are bound to be times when the kids are small that it is difficult keeping on top of everything.

Yes I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. I am going abroad alone in a few weeks, went out drinking last sat night with my friends... don'T feel the need to go on. Everything is great considering I'M married

Well I exiting out of this thread because to me Sakura I think you are going on about what puts a lot of people of feminism tbh. The idea that men are the only ones to really benefit from marriage, that women either dont like marriage or if they do then they are delusional and just pretending etc. That men cant help but take and want a woman to do the shitwork. It is a dysfunctional way to look at things, Im sorry, but it is.

Im not detracting from peoples who have experienced problems but as I said the main problem is people pretending that men behaving this way is normal and its not. Anyway no hard feelings sure I will see you all on another thread.

I just don't get the point of what you are doing here comparing your marriage to other women's.
Compare your marriage to your husband's

Look at the depression rate among married women compared to single women and the happiness of married men by comparison to everyone. I've got the cold hard facts on my side

AS for feminism, you haven't been very empathetic or supportive throughout this thread, just smug really. And an unfounded smugness because you're marriage doesn't sound that equal to me

Sakura wrote - "I just don't get the point of what you are doing here comparing your marriage to other women's.
Compare your marriage to your husband's

Look at the depression rate among married women compared to single women and the happiness of married men by comparison to everyone."

I agree with you Sakura.

Little bit of a light bulb moment for me here Sakura. I haven't been sure why sunny's posts have got me annoyed so much (and I haven't felt capable of wading in because I just couldn't articulate it well enough, and am not in best frame of mind to be trying to at moment). It's because it is not about everybody else's marriage - everyone's marriage is different just as every person is different and when I think about it I don't actually give a toss about other people's marriages and how wonderful the people in those marriages perceive them to be, or not. It's about whether your own marriage is happy and whether both of you truly believe it is 'equal' and 'fair' - however the two of you personally define that. So comparing your marriage to your spouse's marriage is what it is all about, and doing that honestly rather than covering it in a veil of "well I should be expected to do the shitwork/dull stuff because he earns more money and/or works more hours out of the home, so then i should just be happy cos he's still nice to me and babysits once in a while". I don't think I could ever have thought that myself, let alone articulated it, but you're bang on.

Dittany - agree completely

well.. I didn't think it all up myself meg, but thank you The second wave feminists did the donkey work. I did suffer from cognitive dissonance for a little while early on in my marriage and wondered what was wrong with me. As soon as I "remembered" feminism it all slotted into place.

dittany wrote - "If only you wouldn't use that silly feminist analysis on everything then people would like feminism. Of course they would, because it wouldn't be feminism anymore."

Indeed.

This is a really interesting thread. I'd never come across the term cognitive dissonance before but actually that really sums my life up!

I'm a feminist and yet I put up with a shite relationship where I am the main breadwinner, chief cleaner, and also have all the childcare responsibilities from organising birthday parties, to cooking nutritious food, to giving baths and changing nappies (when DD was still in nappies...now it's me who takes her to the toilet)....not to mention all the other stuff like being in charge of doing household shopping, paying all bills, organising holidays.

My relationship is truly shit. And (not so D)P is a constant drain on my emotions and finances.

And yet, I put up with it. And I somehow manage to justify it. And I have no idea how or why because I know full well that he's taking the piss and that I'm falling into all the old traps of working mothers expected to still do all the household stuff.

Sorry, a bit of a rant, this just hit a nerve.

sunny, although I think that you did kinda put yourself in the firing line, I don't think you deserved the latter pronouncements of "smug" and the thinly-veiled sarcasm/sneering aimed at you

this is the feminism topic, isn't it ? Where women are encouraged to debate ?

I think sunny, despite disagreeing with various posters, managed to remain pleasant, what a pity the same courtesy wasn't applied to her

"Well I exiting out of this thread because to me Sakura I think you are going on about what puts a lot of people of feminism tbh."

No, I am not seeing any unpleasantness in that statement

Misguided, maybe

But I didn't say I agreed with what sunny had to say, I was expressing the viewpoint that I think, in fact, she has been effectively silenced (on this thread anyway) by the unpleasantness displayed towards her

I have no wish to argue

I personally hate it when these (feminism) threads get derailed by bickering between the posters, so I shall bow out and continue my lurkery

I think my problem is that sunny kept trying to bring everything back to the specifics of her life, why her marriage worked as it was, how tidy/untidy her house was, how she didn't like cooking, how much money she had to spend on mcdonalds etc. when other posters would talk a little of their home life but then try to make broader points relevant to everyone else. Sunny wasn't trying to move the debate on, or draw from her experiences to examine the broader question of cognitive dissonance. So it started to stifle the debate because she wasn't helping to move the discussion on, just kept responding to posters by reiterating how good her life was and saying things to Sakura like "I was just making suggestions for things you could do around your social life." which was obviously not what Sakura was looking for, or what this thread was in any way about. I think Sunny has made some relevant points but I just don't think Sunny she has really grasped exactly what this thread was about and I personally was finding her responses stifling to the debate. I don't think anyone has been unpleasant but I think this thread is really important and is moved on most effectively by people not just talking about their own experiences, so I'm personally pleased that sunny has pulled away from the thread, although hope I am not being rude in saying that. It just seems too important a debate to several of us for it to be stifled by someone saying "well my life isn't shit so you should learn from me".