Well, my STBX started out full-tilt Bozo crazy hostile right from the moment of the bomb. She has relaxed her war footing somewhat in recent months, often to the point of being semi-nice. I notice, however, that she's only nice when she wants something from me. This afternoon, after this morning's continuation of hostilities, she again flipped and started being nice to me again. I was PO'ed at her so I have not taken her calls, just let them roll to voicemail -- and she called a lot.
It turns out she was going to be gravely late in picking up our S's, because of work. At first she wanted to see if I would be on standby in case she had any difficulties with her last patient.
After her nasty threats this morning, I almost didn't call her aback and almost made the decision to ignore her request to pick up our children. Almost. And it really bugs me how she can now turn around in her professed contempt for me and put on that fakey, sing-song happy face. It really gets to me how fake and superficial her kindness seems to really be.
But in the end I don't want my two boys to suffer for their mother's indiscretion. So I yielded and went to pick them up. When W came to pick them up later from me, and at all times she has spoken to me, aside from the early morning altercation, she was just as syrupy sweet as anyone. Hardly the same person who usually makes habitation in her body. She thanked me for saving her (even paying S7's fees at the daycare -- yeah, I'm a sucker) and apologized for being late, saying she was working on going back to being per diem instead of sallaried/full time, giving her more control over her schedule supposedly. I started to tell her, "Welcome to my world -- the world of full-time work and demanding bosses."
But I realize it's just a matter of time, now that she has attained whatever object or favor she has demanded, before the facade 'll come down and she'll again wage her war against me.
It's sad that she wants to be the heroic single working mom, but cannot hack being full-time and salaried. She bent my ear quite a bit just today alone about her plight, like how difficult and demanding her bosses are. Whenever I, myself had in the past relayed my own work-related angst to her, she acted like I was crazy and exaggerating. And whenever my work prevented me from being able to be there for our sons, she certainly never cut me any slack.
I look back at her income in the three years prior to the bomb and I see how she let her per diem hours dwindle to nothing. Her work had become nothing more than a hobby, she got to goldbrick and pretend her contribution was as much as it ever was. I can forget and put aside the year after S3 was born but all that other wasted time meant she herself was the chief drag on our finances, and she was the one that complained the loudest about how poor our income to debt ratio was.
If she would be honest with herself, she would now realize that she had for sometime become pretty much a "kept" woman, especially when compared to so many other working mothers I know. She had it good, but she took it for granted -- just as I had taken our marriage for granted in my own way.
So, although I'm concerned for my S's having their mother away so much, I am also not quite happy that W is trying to retreat back to her comfort zone of minimal income, minimal outcome. If she thinks I'm going to pay for her to sit around on her butt and demand a greater amount out of my hide to pay for childcare, she's got another thing coming. I am not going to pay for her to go back to acting like a barely-employed housewife once she's no longer my wife to begin with, and when she is more than capable of pulling her own weight. Not on my dime she's not.
