2013年10月21日 星期一

Annotation 1: Losing yourself after you find out you are losing your spouse


The author lists different kinds of sense of loss which the people will experience after they find their spouses have an affair.

First is losing self-identity. They will keep thinking “I don’t know who I am anymore.” In the past, they might regard themselves as friendly, warm, humorous and capable people, but now they’ll think they have hundreds of disadvantages like jealous, sensitive, lose control easily or want to revenge all the time. Because the anger blinds their eyes, they cannot find the true self in their mind. What’s more, the suspicion to themselves might drown them to death.

Second is losing the feeling of being cherished. The abandoned partners will regard themselves as something like trash which can be thrown away at any time. They might think they are special to their spouses before, but suddenly realize they are not the only special one in their spouses’ life.

Third is losing control of the mind and body. For example, although it’s really painful to think of the scenes of your spouse and his/ her lover together, they still keep emerging into your mind frequently, which will drive you crazy and affect the sleeping quality. Also, you cannot stop checking all his/her stuff like bills, pockets of his jackets, car, bag and so on. The distrust to your spouse enables your behavior become impulsive. Some of the abandoned partners will over dieting or exercising in order to make themselves more attractive and find their pride back in front their spouses.

Forth is losing contact with others. “Who can I trust?” The shame and self-abased enable you to think that everyone is remarking about you. Therefore, you’ll be afraid to go outside and connect with people. Besides, whether telling parents and children or not will be a big trouble for you. Also, you might not want to become a burden for your friends, moreover, you will have doubt that if your friends will keep the secret or not. All these reasons make the abandoned partners abase themselves from the people.

Fifth is losing the will to live. It’s not surprise that people will commit suicide if he/she loses the ability to live or cannot find someone to love or being love. This is the worst reflection to the affairs.

Once you cheat on your spouse, it means that he/she not only have to suffer the pain of losing you but also losing himself/herself. We can see that most of the abandoned partners will think that it’s all their faults to let their spouses cheat. “I think we are intimate with each other, but obviously it’s all my imagination.” There is a survey shows that most of the people will suffer melancholia for many years after they find their spouse having an affair. Do people who try to rationalize affairs really understand how painful their spouses will be? Do they know that their temporary excitement might hurt their families forever?


Source:
珍妮斯史普林&麥克.史普林(1998).外遇的男女心理:如何走出創傷與重建信任 p16~p42

2 則留言:

  1. It is clear and easily understood about different kinds of sense of loss in your article.And your sentences remind me of the plots of the Fierce Wife, a Taiwanese soap opera. I would connect the sense of loss to what the main actress counter in the soap opera and recall the extreme pain she experiences when she finds her husband has extramarital affair.
    However, in your last paragraph, you used two questions to end your article. I think it is not powerful enough to support your ideas. Maybe you need to rewrite your ideas again and connect your source to your ideas more tightly.

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  2. It is very organized of your annotation to show different kinds of loss after one is cheated by his/her spouse. But I still want to give you a suggestion. In the last paragraph, you mention a survey. Maybe you can offer the data to or just don't mention it. And also about the two questions, I think it is ok. But if you add an answer like "It is obvious......", it will be more persuasive. Because it is good to raise readers' curiosity by asking questions in the beginning of an article. But I think it is not appropriate to do so in the end of an article.

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