FLTC, There's just no way I can catch up on your sitch or promise to stay on the BB, so I hope you don't mind if I pop in now and then.
I did read your analagoy of the emotional rooms and really liked it. One of the things I was hoping for when you started pursuing this deployment was that you WILL be able to forge a connection between some of your emotional rooms. The military discipline and lessons of self control are essential for you to apply to YOURSELF in your home situation.
My sitch is much better, and my W's attitude has come 180, not because of anything that I did, I've actually backslide and now W is coaching me on taking care of myself and maintaining a positive attitude!
I was very focused on applying the DBing principles on myself, and finally realized that I was preparing myself for the life I wanted to live, if W was part of it, great, if not - that was her choice and I was only going to demonstrate how I was ready to be a loving partner. I stopped trying to change W's behavior or attitude.
W finally got a good job but with a long commute. Several months later (and after W started reading 'The Secret'), W admitted to me that she had been planning on getting an apartment closer to her work and leaving me. She had been saying she was going to move out all along, but now was financially independent and could put action to her threats.
Long before she got the job, I had stopped responding to her threats (a 180 for me). I continued as best as I could to act happy and supportive and take care of myself and our family. W would go into storming, slamming, trashing fits. I learned to sit and let her wave of anger wash over and through and quickly out of the house. I stopped trying to influence her attitude and emotions.
I did respond to her primary love language of physical touch, and as soon as possible would massage her neck, or scratch her arm or wrap her up in a full body hug. I'll tell you, it often took all my Marine Corps discipline to ignore my natural reactions and walk up to this snarling, bitter, nasty alien and ignore the hateful comments to leave her alone and start rubbing her neck. Almost always my hugs were met with initial stiffness and resistance. I was not 'forcing myself on her' I was responding to what I knew to be her primary love language and meeting what I had learned was her deepest, underlying unrealized need.
I was doing this not just because I had figured out it was what she needed, but because that is how I wanted my marriage to work. I was going to show love - returned or not.
When I came home from my deployment, I was determined to fix my family, and my W left me and kids halfway to DisneyWorld to go back to her boyfriend. It got even worse after that, but I did not lose sight of how I wanted my family and my responsibility to act the way I wanted.
You do not have to develop a reactive plan to W's emotions and actions. Implementation of your plan will have to wait until you're home, but if it's YOUR plan, with realistic and equal room for W, you implement your plan and let W decide to participate or not.
