Phil is not going to throw his wife to the wolves.
When Phil is in control, his wife spews. THAT'S WHAT WALK-AWAY SPOUSES DO.
I suspect in her case she spews when Phil is calm because she begins to feel comfortable enough to do so. But when he flips, she flips out further. And that's the nature of the beast. Walk-aways don't make sense. They don't perceive things quite right. Everything is exaggerated inside them and therefore, it is exaggerated when they let it out.
The burden is on Phil to maintain a certain level of calm if he wants to turn this thing around because his wife is going to have to feel two things: 1) respected even though he disagrees with her and 2) that she misses him.
Each time he forces a kiss or a hug and each time he snaps on her, he reinforces her decision to leave him. He convinces her she did the right thing.
If Phil can stop doing that and can maintain a calm demeanor in the face of her spewing, and instead of spewing back dare to consider that there could be at least some basis in fact to the things she says - if no other basis than it was how she PERCEIVED things - he will finally have this bull by the horns.
Simply telling her she's wrong and reinforcing her guilt isn't going to bring her home.
Phil needs to understand that validating her "feelings" - even if they're exaggerated and even if he disagrees - is not the same as conveying to her that it was okay for her to have walked out on her family.
