@mindblank -- funny (well, not "funny" ha-ha, but funny odd) you're the second person to use that exact phrase re: WAW.
She does have this way of going overboard -- or pushing overboard -- when anything even mildly positive happens. It's like she's waiting for the greenlight and interprets everything as a green light. Like I say, she's obviously not reading _DR_ LOL because she's "pushing" in reverse, isn't she?
On Signore Schmuckatelli in Upstate City, I'm pretty confident that it is (mostly) an EA. They had dinner in early January in Home City and I suspect, based on an email she sent a friend from my computer, that there MAY -- and I emphasize "may" -- have been a kiss at that dinner, because she wrote her friend that they had "lots to talk about ;)" re: that dinner, but then maybe she just wanted to talk about the flirtation that was starting. I know for a fact she plans to see S.Schmuckatelli next weekend, because she 'fessed up to it, but I don't expect it to go physical since she's moving out of the house in June and will have the freedom to do it all she wants at that point and because FIL will be baby-sitting the kids so she'll need to be back fairly early.
I have IC for my own issues, but frankly I don't talk to him about the D because he's really doom-and-gloom on it. I think he thinks he's doing me a favor by helping me prepare. He's not hip to DB, so I just keep that issue off the agenda. I work parenting stuff and adult ADD with him.
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Had a rough start to the morning. WAW was getting ready for her long run -- she's training for one of these charity marathons -- and couldn't find her iPod and started freaking out. Obviously the tension of living together is getting to her. I ignored it until she started snapping at the kids and then I volunteered to help her "if you'd like me to." She said nothing but kept raging - "so much crap in this house!" I said (shouldn't have, but did anyway), "Well you don't have to worry about that much longer, do you?" So she went out to the porch to stretch and on a hunch I went into her (our) bedroom and, voila, there it was, on her dresser, in plain sight.
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Well, sh*t. So I brought it out to her. Yes, I rescued her. And I felt stupid about it. But by the same token, I respect her dedication to this event and don't want to see her fail. Blech.
I also realized when I went on the porch to hand it to her that I physically shrink in her presence when she's in these moods. It was an astonishing realization. Not that I'm huge or anything, just 5'11", but I hunch over a bit and avert my eyes like a beaten dog. When I have my As-If Mojo working, I stand tall. But my mojo's been on the fritz lately.
Gotta get my mojo woikin' again. I'm in a valley right now. Gotta keep my eye on the peak.
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robx -- Cognitive Dissonance is a term psychologists use to describe the "pain" we feel when we are confronted by information that disconfirms, or doesn't square with, what we already believe.
For example, say you're a loyal Republican/Democrat, a True Believer. You witness President Bush/Obama screw up time and time again. Instead of saying to yourself, "Wow, this guy's a real Bozo," you take that disconfirming information and squeeze and mash and twist and spin it -- or dump it altogether -- to make it fit with what you already believe: Ah, it's that darn librul media again! Oh, it's those pesky obstructionist Republicants!
So the idea behind 180s is based, loosely, on the idea of creating cognitive dissonance -- hey, what the fark? That's not my husband! That's not my wife! S/he usually does X but is doing Y!
The idea of being "mysterious" is similar. You're acting in ways not typical to what your spouse believes is "you."
That 1990s self-help guru Tony Robbins used to call it "disrupting the pattern." He likened it to a 33-1/3 LP -- scratch the surface of the LP and it never plays the same way again.
