Of Human Bondage and Mildred

Philip spends money he cannot spare on dinners and gifts for her. She answers him with scorn. The colder she is, the harder he chases.

This page reads that as attraction to harm. It means you are pulled hardest toward the people who are worst to you. You can see it clearly, and the pull does not weaken.

Philip does see it. He knows she is shallow and unkind. He even despises her, and he still cannot let go.

She leaves him for other men more than once. Each time she turns up again in need, he takes care of her.

Philip loses money he needs to her. He loses a friend, too, when Mildred goes off with him.

He also gives up Norah, a kind woman who loves him, to go back to Mildred.

The cost of this pull is often like this. The kind person starts to feel dull. The steady love gets left for the one that wounds.

The book shows the pull clearly. Philip swears he is done with her, then finds himself back at the tea shop.

That walk back is the place to catch it. The body signal, a restless ache or a tight throat, comes before his feet turn.

Behavioral Interception is the practice of catching an automatic pattern as it begins, intercepting its usual response, and practicing a different action until it becomes more natural.

Here, catching it means noticing the ache as the start of the pattern, not as love. The usual response is to go back. A different action is to walk on past, and spend the evening with someone kind.

Philip does get free of her in the end. It takes him years he did not need to lose.

Philip knows how cold Mildred is to him. Why doesn't knowing it stop him?

Compare how Philip feels with Norah and with Mildred. What does he seem to mistake for love?

Find one moment Philip could have walked away. Write what he might have done instead.