Status 2 - W friendlier but still very distant

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Kalni, You've asked some very intelligent questions.

Why does she get so upset over your question since she seems very persistent on the D?

This is still a mystery to me. There's 15 years of emotional investment; clearly she is not yet "emotionally divorced" and even tells me details about her life without my asking.

She has a lot of anger and that's something you have to figure out why. As long there is still so much of it there is no way she'll question her decision.

I spent Nov-Feb focussed on quenching the anger by listening and validation (mostly with Lan's coaching) and she seemed consistently calm but apparently anger still lingers below the surface as I just found out. And the thought of R ignites it. I have toyed with the suggestion (Lan again) of showing "its over" but I still fear this may drive her full steam ahead all the way over the edge? I want to generate as much "cognitive dissonance" (a.k.a DBing) before that.

Why is she so angry? Do you have an idea?

From what I gather (Mars/Venus book) women hold on to resentment for years and years and its hard/impossible to let go of it. I can fully understand she feels hurt by many things I did or didn't do. But she keeps talking of something that happened in 1993 when apparently I came home from work and got annoyed with her for misplacing a pen or something silly like that; I listen but also remind her that harping on this kind of thing does not help our cause and that seems to calm her down.

I called her today (2 days after the outburst). She was calm and friendly again. So I applied the "friendly neighbor" technique. I talked about S7 - told her he learned about earthquakes recently and when he f**rts loudly he asks D11 if she can feel the aftershocks. That made W laugh. So I don't think my little "test" did permanent damage; in fact it may have sown a seed if I think of it optimistically.