Free Quitting (previously published as Mastering the Art of Quitting) by Peg Streep

started, both still had children under the age of majority where they lived. The children are now grown, but Linda’s and George’s work and habits still keep each partner in his or her own home base. They live parallel lives that connect for weekends, long vacations, phone calls, and e-mails. Their plan, though, is to live together when they both retire.
    Although their life together is free of the daily stresses that most couples living together are familiar with, it’s hardly stress-free. While George spends freely, Linda is much more focused on saving and the future. Over the years, their different attitudes toward money have sparked enormous arguments. Linda initiates these confrontations, usually after she has discovered a financial matter that George decided on his own. (He has sold off furniture and other valuables, used money earmarked for retirement for other purposes, and overspent on his hobbies and other interests). In the past, Linda has been momentarily energized to find a solution, but she gets tired of fighting with him and life goes on, which leaves the conflict between them unresolved. But as retirement nears, these tensions have become more constant, particularly once Linda discovered the enormous amount of credit card debt—over six figures’worth—George had accumulated. He is strapped for cash because of the high cost of interest on this debt.
    Linda has tried a number of approaches—going to a counselor, among them—but George remains resistant to her suggestions. Since he has earned this money, he wants to be free to spend it as he sees fit. He gets angry if Linda suggests that they have mutual oversight on spending. She is frightened for the financial future, is worried about retirement, and suffers a great deal of emotional distress. But her striving for financial security isn’t her only goal; emotional connection and being part of a family are important to her as well. She is also afraid of spending the rest of her life without a partner. So, when she considers leaving George, those other goals pop into play and she remains effectively stuck—still made actively unhappy by her fears and his actions, but unable to do anything about it.
    Conflicting goals leave people stuck without the hope of resolution unless disengagement is a possibility. The particulars of Linda’s conflicting goals can be switched with others—work satisfaction versus monetary reward, family stability versus having your emotional needs met by a true partner—but it all comes down to the same thing.
    Without the ability to disengage, people will continue to live in conflict, unhappily and unhealthily. Luckily, true goal disengagement is a skill that can be cultivated and learned.

 
    Chapter Three
    Quitting As an Art
    By now, you’ve realized that while the culture says that quitting is the easy way out, genuine disengagement isn’t. Goal disengagement takes place on what might be thought of as four levels simultaneously: cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral. In plain language, those are the levels of thought, feeling, motivation, and action. As we describe and explain these levels, it will become clear that modifying motivation and behavior are wholly dependent on achieving cognitive and affective disengagement.
    For disengagement to work, it must subvert many of the automatic and habitual processes of the mind that keep us persisting no matter what, along with battling cultural pressure. Letting go on every level, it would seem, isn’t as easy it looks.
    Cognitive Disengagement
    The part of disengagement that requires us to clear the mind (the working memory, to be more precise) of intrusive thoughts is called cognitive disengagement. Here the white-bear problem, the automatic process mentioned in Chapter 1, comes into play, along with other forms of rumination that effectively keep our thoughts going round on the carousel instead of in a new