Cognitive dissonance: The mental stress experienced when one holds two or more contradictory beliefs at the time same.
Diane made a mental list.
He flirted with your best friend. Slurped spaghetti with her like they were having oral sex with noodles at your dinner table. Heather was partly to blame - which is why I stopped calling her - but Sam should have stepped up and shut down her flirtation. Instead, he encouraged it, reveled in it.
He tried to go a ski weekend with his buddies and lied about it - lied about a relative dying of all things! Obviously it wasn't innocent or he would have just asked about it. "Semi-harmless" ski weekend he'd called it. SEMI-harmless!
I can hardly have a conversation with him at the bar lately without his eyes wandering to whatever woman comes into his line of vision. Oh, he'll do it quickly, he thinks he's being sly. But I see it.
He didn't come visit when I had the flu. Yes, he sent Coach over every day with soup from Melville's and he called every night - but he wouldn't come because he said if he got sick, he'd have to shut down the bar and lose thousands he couldn't afford to lose. He didn't trust Coach to tally the receipts right at the end of the night. Funny how this didn't bother him when he was plotting his ski weekend with horny trollops.
Will he always let me down when I need him? What if I get hit by a car? Would he even come to the hospital?
He refuses to get rid of that disgusting little black book of sluts. He's always threatening me with other women. "I'll be crawling with chicks by sundown," he once said.
He can't say I love you - who can't say I love you? He will murmur it when he's sleeping - and then in the morning claims that he doesn't remember saying it. Who does that?
And then… the big one. He actually let Boston magazine profile him as an eligible bachelor… and admitted that he wanted millions of women to lust after him! Oh, and yet somehow my posing for a respected artist was out of the question.
As Diane went down the checklist of his transgressions, she despised him. But she despised herself more for putting up with him.
The slaps he'd given her in the bar still stung her cheek. That had been the last straw. Sure, she'd slapped him first - but he was an athlete. Much bigger and stronger than she was. Not only that, he'd gotten off on the whole thing. Clearly, he'd expected her to just forget about what had happened - and turn it into a sexual encounter. Everything was a sexual encounter with Sam Malone.
She thought of how he had gone to bed with another woman after they'd had a fight - they hadn't even broken up! Got into bed with her - and did god only knows what. He said they didn't have sex, but really? How could she believe that? And if not, how far did they go? She had been so sickened by the whole thing she'd blocked it from her mind and never brought it up again.
Hate, hate, hate. White burning hot hot hot hate.
She was embarrassed that she'd ever said she loved him. Humiliated at how completely she gave herself to him in bed. And revolted that she had fantasized about a future with him.
All of those times she poured out her heart to him, and his answer was, "I don't know, I wasn't listening."
You knew what he was. You went there anyway. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Diane began to restlessly pace back and forth… her breathing was quick and shallow… was she hyperventilating? Was the crazy coming on? She'd only experienced it twice before - once in high school, and once in her freshman year of college. Her mind, scattered and broken beyond repair. And then the facial tick would yank her mouth spasmodically, as if she had invisible puppet strings tied to her lips. No, no.
She hated Sumner - not for dumping her, but for picking that bar to do it in.
But that wasn't the only list that began formulating in her mind.
How will I get along without speaking to him all day? I've been talking to him all day, every day, and most of the night, for two years. As much as much as we argue, or he says he's not listening to me - we never run out of things to say to each other.
He makes me laugh so hard. Even when I am hating him for something, he makes me laugh. Will anyone make me laugh like that again?
I make him laugh too. He really gets me that way. So many men don't or are intimidated or turned off by a woman with a sharp sense of humor.
He looks at me like no man ever has - not even Sumner. He looks at me like I'm the only woman on the planet. Does he look at other women like that?
He's always defending me - always on my side. Even when I'm driving him nuts.
He keeps me grounded. I tend to take myself too seriously. He lightens me up.
I love his good heart. How he refused to throw the men he thought were gay out of the bar - even if it meant losing all of his regulars. How he stood up with his gay friend, Tom.
I love the effortless confidence he exudes. If the bar caught on fire, we'd all run to Sam and do whatever he did. If he's doing it, it must be the thing to do.
And of course I'm just terribly physically attracted to him. Horribly. Hopelessly. Helplessly.
I could kiss him for hours. I have kissed him for hours.
He's so passionate, loving and vulnerable in bed - how he sighs "Oh Diane" as he's kissing my neck - how he stares deeply into my eyes as we make love - sometimes looking at me questioningly as if he's so amazed and grateful to be with me - how he entwines his fingers with mine and folds me into the crook of his warm strong body and stays like that with me all night.
Is he like that with those other women?
Why is he so sensitive and caring in bed and so insensitive and uncaring out of it?
He read War and Peace for me.
Diane stopped pacing and collapsed into the couch.
She hated him and loved him and hated herself for loving him. Why did that sound familiar?
How can I ever live with someone who is going to make fun of everything I care about - my music, my writing, my poetry, my meditation, my very thoughts and feelings?
And yet how can I live without how he makes me feel - so alive, so engaged, so desired? He makes me stop thinking. Good god, someone had to.
Hysteria - An inappropriate over-reaction to bad news or disappointments.
"Help me," she heard herself whisper - to no one. And no one answered.