You can file Ann Romney being too distraught to ride her horses after her husband’s election loss  as the type of problem that well-fed, privileged people have, and you’d be right. But there’s something more at play neurologically, something that pertains to us all. We sometimes convince ourselves that life is going to be a certain way. It becomes our reality, even if it isn’t a reality yet. Perhaps it’s the repetition of chemical reactions, but we manage to hardwire our brain in a certain direction. Sometimes trauma can knock us out of this mindset in an instant. But usually it’s a slow mourning, a deliberate process.

From a really good Washington Post piece by Philip Rucker about the new normal facing the Romneys post-campaign:

“The defeated Republican nominee has practically disappeared from public view since his loss, exhibiting the same detachment that made it so difficult for him to connect with the body politic through six years of running for president. He has made no public comments since his concession speech in the early hours of Nov. 7 and avoided the press last week during a private lunch with President Obama at the White House. Through an aide, Romney declined an interview request for this story.

After Romney told his wealthy donors that he blamed his loss on ‘gifts’ Obama gave to minority groups, his functionaries were unrepentant and Republican luminaries effectively cast him out. Few of the policy ideas he promoted are even being discussed in Washington.

‘Nothing so unbecame his campaign as his manner of leaving it,’ said Robert Shrum, a senior strategist on Democratic presidential campaigns. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever be a significant figure in public life again.’

Yet friends insist Romney is not bitter. Bitterness, said one member of the family, ‘is not in the Romney genetic code.’

One longtime counselor contrasted Romney with former vice president Al Gore, whose weight gain and beard became a symbol of grievance over his 2000 loss. ‘You won’t see heavyset, haggard Mitt,’ he said. Friends say a snapshot-gone-viral showing a disheveled Romney pumping gas is just how he looks without a suit on his frame or gel in his hair.

‘He’s not a poor loser,’ said John Miller, a meatpacking magnate who co-chaired Romney’s finance committee and owns the beach house next door. ‘He’s not crying on anybody’s shoulders. He’s not blaming anybody. . . . He’s doing a lot of personal introspection about the whole process — and I’m not even sure that’s healthy. There’s nothing you can do about it now.’

By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in private and trying to get back to riding her horses.”