Walk Away German Wife (WAGW)

[PortlandDad]

Hey Jag,
Today was a good day. Pheonix does make an excellent point, and one that I hadn't really considered. At this point, the only difference between living the way I am and being divorced are the legal entanglements. Being separated and having my kids and finances secure is the next-best-thing to being divorced. There really isn't any reason or need to push things at all. I guess I was hoping to jar something loose by pressing her for the D now, but she caved, so now I either follow through with sending her papers, or I cave, too.

Actually, I may just cave anyway. I talked to my MIL today. It seems that my W was up almost all night talking to her last night and crying. She doesn't want a D at all, and only agreed because she didn't want a fight. On top of it, she went to the doctor today. She has a fatty growth on her leg that the doctor feels could be cancerous and that has been causing her a lot of pain lately (not surprisingly it is at the site of her old herniated muscle). The doctor thinks that it has been exacerbated by her being on her feet all day for her nursing school. He recommends an ultrasound and excision, which would put her off her feet for a few days, and given that it took her a year to recover the last time from leg surgery, she will likely need to quit school.

On top of it, she has no insurance and is not covered under the german medical system because she in a US citizen, so she will have to pay the entire cost of the operation herself. I think she can get some reimbursement from our american insurance, but she will have to front the mone, and even then I think she hasn't met her deductable and the coverage for out-of-network is only 50%.

I also had the sad duty of informing her that her American Express bill came yesterday ($1750) and asked her how I should get the bill to her. This, of course, was before I learned of her medical condition.

In a word, she is screwed. I am trying hard not to feel a sense of schadenfreude about this, but it seems that this might be the turn-of-events that gets her to the bargaining table about coming home.

I am debating sticking to the hard-line approach of wanting the D, seeing as how this 180 seems to have brought her back to reality a little, but I am afraid that if I continue to push this tack that it may backfire. My instinct is to be compassionate and just drop the whole D talk, but if that is what propelled her to her current epiphany, then backing off would be a significant backslide.

For the first time in a long time, I am daring to be hopeful.