I have started to see the world through a narcissism detection filter. I think the proper model for studying human behavior is one which assesses behavior in terms of narcissism. Here is an example:
Julie Powell is a published author who wrote a book about cooking and other things and it was turned into a movie, “Julie and Julia”. After the book was published, she, although married, embarked on an affair with someone else. And now she has written a book about it.
This book is partially about your experience as a butcher, but also partially about your relationships with your husband Eric and your lover, D. Why did you decide to fit the two into the same book? Is butchering the metaphor, or do you hate food metaphors for life?
Well, I’m wary of food metaphors in general, though it’s certainly true that metaphor lies thick on the ground when it comes to butchery, and is almost unavoidable, even more than I’d imagined when I began. But I think I’d rather think of the butchering apprenticeship in Cleaving as a prism through which I was able to look at my marriage, and myself and who I wanted to be, in a new way. My original working title, when I was writing my proposal, was The Dying Art: A Story of Meat and Marriage. I was obviously in a much rawer and less optimistic place then, because the links I saw between marriage and butcher shops were that: 1) Both were struggling, perhaps indeed dying institutions. 2) A sort of dying, whether actual or spiritual, seemed an inherent facet of both. But as I began to do the work, I realized there was something beautiful about the delicate process of ushering a dead animal into something else that was nourishing and beautiful.
Yes, the marriage is dying, especially if you are taking a cleaver to it. The second meaning of the word, cleave, is to adhere. I guess she didn’t get that.
The truth is that she wanted something just for herself to the exclusion of her husband and she got it. Cheating is selfish and narcissistic. But then her husband also cheated. These are people without children and trying to find the meaning of life. For them, the meaning of life is whatever they want to pursue at the moment. This is not a truth that extends to those of us who are parents.