Applying the Coolidge Effect

I chose Animal Husbandry, by Laura Zigman,  for the chick lit group because I thought it would stimulate conversation about men and how they treat women, which it really didn’t.  What we ended up discussing was the neuroses of women who can’t really get on with life after being dismissed by someone they thought they were in love with, who they thought was in love with them.  

I like Zigman’s books, and her writing style.  I also like that she worked for ten years before she started writing, and that she wasn’t a lawyer (please – is there anyone out there who ISN’T a lawyer who is now a writer?), and that she writes (her words) “thinly-disguised autobiographical novels”.  I mean, who hasn’t been dumped?  Who hasn’t obsessed about a boyfriend’s/fiance’s/husband’s ex- or present significant other?  Who hasn’t agonized over working or staying at home with their children?  (Actually, me – at least the first one.  I have never really been dumped…at least not unceremoniously.)

By the way – anyone who has seen the movie Someone Like You with Ashley Judd and the always-luscious Hugh Jackman would recognize this book as the background for the movie.  Some things were changed in the making of the film, although I won’t give those away.

The premise of the book is how a woman tries to explain being unceremoniously dumped – with no warning, nothing to clue her in to what might be happening or why it happened at all.  She develops, and publishes (under a pseudonym) a theory on human male behavior based on the Coolidge Effect – and while one would expect all manner of hell to break loose as a result of that (one difference I will reveal between the book and the movie) – it does not.  What it does do is lead this woman to a rather blunt realization that she wasted a lot of time and energy on a narcissistic jerk, trying to explain to herself why he dumped her.  I’ve  known a lot of people who have done just that…they’ve spent days, months, or even years agonizing over the “whys” of a break up – well beyond the accepted grieving period for such an event, until one day they inexplicably “wake up” and realize the person was never worth all of the expended energy after all.  What could, in essence, be referred to as an “Aha!” moment. 

That’s what I like about Zigman’s books – they reveal the slightest bit of neurosis in the main character, that, if one delves deeply enough, one can find in oneself…because, believe me, if you look hard enough, you’ll find that it’s there.