Cognitive Dissonance. in Phoenix

“Cognitive Dissonance, the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in people is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves. The concept was developed in the 1950s by American psychologist Leon Festinger and became a major point of discussion and research.”

I have most often heard the term “cognitive dissonance” used in relation to religious people and how they react to being told their religion is bullshit. They are literally incapable of hearing or considering anything that contradicts what they have been indoctrinated to believe.

For me personally, I am experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance because I was indoctrinated throughout life to believe certain things about myself, others, and how the world works, that I am only now beginning to realize were complete bullshit.

No one will ever love you.

You can’t survive without me.

You’re weak.

You’re pathetic.

You’re crazy.

No one else would ever put up with you.

You don’t deserve (fill in the blank).

You’re crazy.

You’re broken.

I believed these things, and many, many more. A lot of really terrible things about myself. I was also raised with the idea that all I would ever be good for was being a wife and mother, that I should take care of myself so someone (preferably with money) would want me. I was never encouraged to be anything, not that I can remember. I don’t remember even having interests, really. No long-term interests like, hey, I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up! Nothing like that. All I thought I ever wanted to be was a wife and mother. The idea that I could be anything else, anything I wanted, is completely foreign to me.

I reached a point with #2 (whose name I believe I should change to “Wanker”) where I actually said to a friend, “Well, he doesn’t hit me.” As if that was all that was required of him to qualify in being my husband. At least he doesn’t hit me. And you know why I would say a thing like that? Because that was a step up from Sperm Donor in some bizarre way. The issues in my second marriage were completely different from the issues with Sperm Donor over the course of the 20+ years I’ve known him. But somehow not hitting me made Wanker so much better. That’s fucked up, folks. That’s some serious fucked-up-ness. Like, sure, he rarely touched me or even looked at me, he was cold and distant and often downright mean to me. I remember telling him once that it wouldn’t surprise me if he smacked me with a rolled-up newspaper one day, like a bad dog. He didn’t deny wanting to smack me with a rolled-up newspaper… just… called me ridiculous and blew me off, completely discounting my feelings and driving me even deeper into the self-loathing depression that I experienced in a pretty extreme manner for the entire FOUR FUCKING YEARS he lived here. The worst part is that he knew he was doing it. It was willful. It was a blatant attempt at destroying me. After awhile, he didn’t even bother trying to hide the utter disdain he seemed to feel for my entire existence.

But hey, at least he didn’t hit me, right?

Fuck that.

Sperm Donor spent well over 15 years, even after we were separated, even after I was remarried, programming me and everyone around me to believe that I was literally mentally unfit to exist, basically.

I know I probably rehash a lot of shit here and I’ve probably written about it before, but I don’t care. These are the things in my mind right now.

Sperm Donor would argue with me, push me to the point of hysteria, push me until I was out of control and wanting to harm myself because I just wanted to feel something else, something besides the agony in my head, the self-loathing. And then he would, on occasion, call my oldest 2 children from their rooms, sit them down, have them see me hysterical, crying, wishing for death, and he’d tell them, “See? Your mom isn’t well, she’s sick in her head and that makes her do and say terrible things to me. Don’t you think she should be nicer to me?” And my kids would agree with him. Oh yes, look at mommy, she’s a mess, with her daily puffy, red eyes, and her short temper and her out-of-control-ness.

Once, in the time after we split up but still lived together, he convinced my youngest 2 kids and his mother that I was a danger to them. He took my kids to his mother’s house and scared her so bad that she took my babies and hid with them in the basement so I couldn’t come kill them all. Literally. This is a thing that happened. She and I have talked about it and she’s so sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d spent 13 years by that point convincing everyone that I was a certifiable lunatic. I’ve also talked about it with my oldest son and he knows now that it was all bullshit, that I was never a danger to them or anyone else, that I was just so goddamn broken after years of abuse and his dad used that as a weapon to turn as many as possible against me. It was an effective method.

His family is connected. They tried to help him take custody of our sons after I broke things off with him. They were so convinced by him that I was some sort of monster that they truly believed my boys would be better off without me.

He was so effective in his abuse that I was convinced the entire world would be better off without me.

And then Wanker came along and reinforced all of those old ideas with his behavior and his neglect of me and our marriage. Obviously I was just destined to be miserable. Obviously I didn’t deserve happiness, kindness, love, and respect. I mean, if I deserved those things, someone would give them to me, right?

And suddenly, someone comes along, the least expected person, and he is the most perfect person in every way. A million times throughout my life, I would think, “I wish (insert name) would treat me like this, love my like this, see me like this,” and suddenly… someone does. Someone does all of the things, says all of the things, loves me in the way I’ve always wished for and never believed I deserved. And without being told! It was always so frustrating to me to express myself, especially with Wanker, about how I felt and how I wished I felt and how he treated me and how I wished he’d treat me. Because, you know, when you have to ask someone to treat you a certain way or, I don’t know, actually express love and affection? Yeah, it kind of means jack shit when they actually do it. It doesn’t feel unconditional when you have to tell someone how to love you.

So, now, I have this person who says and does everything just right, just the way I’ve wished for my entire life, and I never had to say a word, never had to ask (beg) to feel loved. My brain isn’t processing that properly. I don’t know how to process it because it is the exact opposite of everything I’ve ever known. A part of my mind is putting its fingers in its ears and going, “Lalalalala! Can’t hear you! This can’t be true!” And that part of me, oh I feel so sad for her. That poor girl who has never known love, never felt loved, she can’t allow this, she can’t let this in. Because Sperm Donor and Wanker? Oh yeah, there was a time, in the beginning, they loved her. They made her feel loved. That’s how they won her over, you know? That’s how they got past the blockades. They knew the right things to say and do, the right way to break down her walls and slip behind her defenses and destroy them from the inside.

But you? Oh man. The minute I looked in your eyes for the first time in more years than I can remember, all of my barricades fell. Turned to dust and blew away. And that is terrifying. No one has ever had that power before. Being vulnerable with anyone is generally horrifying for me because every time I’ve allowed myself to be vulnerable, to open up to someone, they have used it as a weapon against me later. It seems to me that, whenever someone found out enough about me and my mental illnesses, they used that as a manipulation tool, a method of control.

You don’t scare me. I mean, you, I’m not afraid of you. I don’t believe that you would ever… you are not them. You couldn’t be more different from them. But you are also the only person like you I’ve ever known, and so you are an anomaly. You are something outside of the routine. You are change. Change is scary. Consciously, I trust you completely. Psychologically, I don’t know how to trust anyone.

And that is cognitive dissonance. You contradict everything I’ve ever known, everything I was taught to believe. My brain is reacting in what feels like a similar manner to… like when someone gets an organ transplant and has to be on medicine forever so their body doesn’t reject the new organ? I guess? Something like that. My brain is attempting to reject you as incompatible because you are incompatible with everything I’ve ever known.

Honestly? Fuck that. I am not going to let 41 years of bullshit abuse make me believe that you are somehow incompatible with my life. I am not going to listen to those old voices anymore. I am not going to believe them. I choose you over cognitive dissonance. I choose to love you and be loved by you. Whatever else may be, wherever life takes us, I will always have that, and I choose to believe in it no matter what my broken-ass brain says.

Last updated May 20, 2019