Good Christian Man Friend, who is also an avid consumer of techno-thriller books, used an example you "might" appreciate. In "The Hunt For Red October," in the story's climax the two boats -- Dallas and Red October -- sort each other out by pinging. GCMF said that, now that you've started down your new path SP old boy, WAW is not getting the "return ping" that she expects
Moral of the story stop "pinging" and start living like you are meant to. \:\)
Quite the contrary! Moral of the story -- change the boat, change the return ping, change WAW's POV.
What GCMF was getting at was that in marriage we quickly get conditioned to certain things -- I say X, she does Y -- happens all the time. (And this is in the _DR_ book somewhere where MWD asks if the reader knows how to get the spouse upset, the answer being "of course I know what upsets spouse".)
So if Thinker changes the configuration of the USS Thinker, then WAW doesn't get "back" what she expects -- and, I was suggesting, what she in fact NEEDS in order to continue rationalizing her course of action.
So -- and this is something the old self-help guru Tony Robbins used to talk about -- disrupting the pattern MUST perforce disrupt the Walkaway's logic, rationale, and reasoning. And, ideally, make her/him THINK.
