Last week, we came across one of the movies in the Death Wish series starring Charles Bronson. For anyone who doesn’t know about them, Charles Bronson plays as a man who becomes a vigilante after the murder of his wife and the rape of his daughter. The movie made us start thinking about revenge and divorce.
The Revenge and Divorce Connection
Cases abound in which both women and men try to get revenge during a divorce. Those looking from the outside shake their heads and say, “Tisk, tisk.” And the “victim of the revenge” may think, “What did I do to deserve this?” These things made us wonder:
Is it normal for people to try to get revenge during a divorce?
Do people really get satisfaction seeing their estranged partner suffer in spite of the financial cost (money spent on lawyers)?
According to Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, the desire to get revenge is perfectly natural. Here’s what he told Deborah Kotz in her article “Why Divorcing Women Seek Revenge”.
“Your brain is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. When someone is acting out of revenge, she’s in a state of desire or craving and engages in a behavior that she thinks will produce a reward for her.” He says the Olympic athletes … experience the same patterns of brain activation when thinking about achieving the gold as someone plotting a stick-it-to-him scenario. Both induce feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. “There was probably some evolutionary process of natural selection put into our brains,” he explains, “to make sure we’d be motivated to defend our interests and punish people who have harmed them.”
Divorce, McCullough adds, is a common time to experience these emotions, as couples go from trying to live together, with all the sacrifices that entailed, to living in a very self-protective, self-focused way.
Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics researcher, supports McCaullough’s thoughts. Ariely goes even further to show that people are willing to spend lots of money just for the satisfaction of getting revenge. Lesson – during a divorce, high legal fees will not deter someone with their mind set on getting revenge. Watch the video.
And Then We Asked…
Is all of this healthy?
According to McCaullough, although revenge leads to short-term satisfaction, it tends to do more harm that good because the other person ends up fighting back. X does something to Y and Y, who may have wanted an amicable divorce but is now driven by self-presevation, does something to X. And it goes on and on.
In addition, we all know that the whole situation causes a tremendous amount of stress, and stress is not healthy by any means.
So What Can You Do?
Here are some thing’s we’ve found to be helpful.
If your ex partner is seeking revenge:
1) Don’t make matters worse by going tit-for-tat. Take the high road, but still do what you need to do to protect yourself. The cases we have seen involved false accusation and documentation proving the truth has diffused the situation. Lesson – Document everything.
2) Try to figure out what has made your ex so angry and try apologizing. Forgiveness is far easier in the case of betrayal, says McCullough, if the cheating spouse makes a sincere attempt to apologize and displays genuine remorse. When a wronged person feels apologized to, compensated for the injury, and safe, he says, revenge usually becomes beside the point.
If you are the one tempted to seek revenge try to find other outlets for your anger. Remember, forgiveness is much healthier and a whole lot cheaper than revenge.
Join a Discussion
Did revenge play a role in your divorce or separation. How did you handle it? Leave a comment or contact us and send us feedback.
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