limited destruction

The focus shifts from perceptions, to actions taken by the parties; the acts of sabotage begin, the parties suffer losses just to inflict suffering on the opponent.

LET'S SEE AN EXAMPLE

Description of the scene: Oliver talks with his friend, who’s a lawyer, and he gets some news that he can use in his favor: thanks to a law of the civil code, Oliver can prevent his wife from kicking him out of the house. The law says that two people can be considered legally divorced even when they live in the same house. Therefore, Oliver is willing to live in the same place as Barbara just to prevent her from achieving her goals (Acts of sabotage) and they decide to take turns when using certain rooms (the parties suffer losses just to inflict suffering on the opponent). The lawyer (friend of Oliver) tries to make Oliver think and asks him whether it’s rational for them. Furthermore, he says to him that “there are other houses, there are other women! (...). There is no winning in this, it’s only degrees of losing!”(he makes explicit the losses oliver will suffer). But Oliver is blind to the evidence and replies that “he got more square footage”. 

The War of the Roses, D. DeVito, USA, 1989, 20th Century Fox (01:00:00 - 01:00:55).