I was just telling my coworker today about how I am pretty much "done" with W unless she begins to start communicating back with me. I have predicted that W will likely act like I never sent the email letter I posted above -- just as she tries to downplay or ignore any attempt by me to turn the focus of the conversation back on her, in even the smallest degree. I also predicted to my friend that W's pattern would be that if she cannot attack me directly on our failed R, her next target would be to attack my fatherhood of my 2 S's.
Well this evening I was proven right. After I called to say good night to our sons, W accused me of poisoning her relationship with S6. She said that I told S6 that I am too busy working to maintain two households to play with him -- and that was Mommy's fault.
I told W that I said no such thing. The most I've ever said with regards to that was that I apologized to my S's for those weekends that I am on-call and have to sometimes break away to handle work-related issues, but in no way did I imply that I had to work extra because of W. She said that the only reason S6 would feel so sorry for his father was if I were playing he victim and making her out to be the bad guy. I told her I did no such thing.
W finally asked, "Well, how do you think S6 could possibly have gotten such an idea in his head unless you were doing that very thing?"
Resisting being baited, I calmly told W, "You believe what you want to believe." And then ended the conversation.
Afterwards, I got to thinking about this. My first thought is that W is making more out of something much less that S6 might have said, or S6 repeated something, but he really didn't hear it from me. And I thought further about this -- part of me began to wonder if MIL is really diabolical enough to be planting these conversations in S6's mind. It sounds farfetched and normally I wouldn't give it any more thought, but the MIL has ready access to our son, and she has a motive, and I have also caught her on more than one occasion in outright lies and assassinating my character to elevate her position in our household, at my expense. So would she really stoop to weaving tales in S6's ears, hoping he would parrot them back before W? A crazy, paranoid thought, I know, but I can't help considering it.
