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How is it that people “wake up” after 12 years of marriage (or 3 years of dating) and realize that if they ever had anything, it’s gone?

People really do grow apart. But there’s more to it than that. Sometimes they never really “had anything,” at least not anything close to what they had hoped for.

The good news is that we can and do “wake up.” From what, though? How could we have been so wrong — and, more importantly, how can we avoid being so wrong again?

Psychologists use the term “cognitive dissonance” to explain the discomfort we feel when we have conflicting thoughts, or conflicting thoughts and behaviors. We are so motivated to avoid that discomfort that we filter incoming data. We use what reinforces an established belief and conveniently ignore the rest. And when a behavior, one we can’t or refuse to change, conflicts with a belief, we justify that behavior by manipulating our thoughts.

In other words, cognitive dissonance explains how we can be amazingly close-minded and opinionated, and how we can see the proverbial mote in another’s eye and miss the beam in our own. And, stay with me here, it also explains waking up.… More