{"id":20848,"date":"2025-07-10T20:32:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T19:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=20848"},"modified":"2025-07-10T20:32:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T19:32:17","slug":"dissecting_a_divorce_self-expansion_model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2025\/07\/10\/dissecting_a_divorce_self-expansion_model\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissecting a divorce: Self-expansion model"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2025\/07\/01\/dissecting_a_divorce_all_roads_lead_to_rome\/\">Why is the content hidden?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re comfortable reading about the details of my divorce, <a href=\"#\" id=\"show_divorce_expand\">click here to read this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"display:none;\" id=\"divorce_expand\">\n<p>I learned about the self-expansion model of relationships from Ingrid&#8217;s high school psychology course materials. (I haven&#8217;t read up any more on it since then, so this is an extremely simplified version.) Very briefly, this model says that we seek out relationships with other people so that we can expand our own selves, through acquiring new experiences, capabilities and knowledge. This model immediately struck me as very relevant to my life.<\/p>\n<p>I want to experience new things. I want to see new places, or old places in new ways. I want to experience new music, art, food, nature. I want to try new things within my hobbies. I&#8217;m not an extreme novelty-seeker, and the new experiences don&#8217;t need to be exotic or extreme, but it is important to me to experience the world.<\/p>\n<p>He and I used to do so many things together, especially before the kids &#8211; concerts, movies, museums, walks, road trips. Then he stopped.<\/p>\n<p>I took all the initiative, and even then he rarely joined. I did more and more on my own. Concerts, walks, restaurants. His life was work + home + screens.<\/p>\n<p>I want to experience the world for real, not just read about it on screens. I want my relationships to enrich my life. Not only that, of course, but that is an important part of relationships.<\/p>\n<p>I want to share experiences, to experience things together, and then later remember them together.<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m doing everything on my own anyway, and he only expresses polite interest afterwards, what is the point? Do we even have a relationship, or do we just happen to exist near each other?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n$(document).ready(function() { \n  $('#show_divorce_expand').click(function() { \n    $('#divorce_expand').toggle(); \n  }); \n});\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is the content hidden? If you&#8217;re comfortable reading about the details of my divorce, click here to read this post. I learned about the self-expansion model of relationships from Ingrid&#8217;s high school psychology course materials. (I haven&#8217;t read up any more on it since then, so this is an extremely simplified version.) Very briefly, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[799,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divorce","category-observing_the_self"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20850,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848\/revisions\/20850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}