Does the following apply to one’s getting “fired” as a marriage partner? We think it does:
“I’ve heard that no one gets fired without secretly hoping for the liberation, but that sounds like the kind of pronouncement you make before you’ve been given the boot. Being fired is the pits, ranking right up there with infidelity in its brutalizing effect. The ego recoils and one’s self-image is punctured like a tire by a nail. In the weeks since I’d been terminated, I’d gone through all the stages one suffers at the diagnosis of a soon-to-be-fatal disease: anger, denial, bargaining, drunkenness, foul language, head colds, rude hand gestures, anxiety, and eating disorders of sudden onset. I’d also entertained a steady stream of loathsome thoughts about the man responsible. Lately, however, I’d begun to wonder if it wasn’t true, this notion of a repressed desire to be unceremoniously shit-canned.” –Sue Grafton in “I” is for Innocent