It's not a power rush. It is, a bit, of revenge. But I think I have a fairly fine-tuned sense of just how far I can push because she keeps coming back for more.
In a broader sense, though, we've got to come to grips with this recurring question -- come here or go away?
You yourself have, up and down the threads (not least in mine), advocated Tough Love and Hard Lines and rejected "saving" or "rescuing" or other behaviors that don't compel WAS to own it. Yet in the next breath you appear to advocate Not Tough Love and Not Hard Lines. Rules -- even rules-of-thumb -- are only useful when they are consistent.
As to the specifics, this wasn't from my perspective an "opening" -- not at the end of a day (Father's Day) when she'd spent 4 hours moving stuff to her new house and drawing up lists of goods to be packed for the movers on Friday morning.
And she IS confused and, if you go back to pages 39-41 (and whatever happened to locking thread, btw??), you'll see that this ISN'T all she gets. Yet when she WASN'T getting a "power play," you were sitting your Arabian charger, tilting at the "rescuing" windmill.
From my POV, I do myself no good by enabling AVOIDANCE behavior. I'm happy to lend a hand in COPING. I'm happy to do what I can to be flexible on the kids and what-not. If she can't pick up on "her" day because she's stuck at work, no biggie (assuming it doesn't impinge on plans I might have). I'm happy to have Friendiness and support her in her quest and encourage her new work and business ideas, and encourage her to open up and share and cry, and to not be judgmental. But I won't help her weasel out of the price to be paid.
But what I'm not going to do is play the game her way to enable her to avoid dealing with the reality. She knows that I don't want a divorce, she knows that I think working the problem is better -- even if it does in fact end in D. But I'm not going to keep reminding her of that.
Dangerous? Perhaps. But her confusion and pain are increasingly my allies. The "fuller" her new house gets, the more real it becomes, and the less appealing it is.
Since Big Midwestern City, which was the last time we had a big fight, and which was the start of my new m.o., let's review:
*She's walking-back all her complaints about me in the M
*She's walking-back her desires
*She's telling the story of M "my" way and not hers
*She's totally severed all contact with Signore Schmuckatelli, confessed it, and rejected it
*She's (mostly) stopped arguing about the money
*She's more physical -- very small acts of touch, to be sure, but acts of touch nonetheless
*She's open to acts of service in a way she wasn't even 2 months ago and now even requests some (per DB Coach Jody, an important step)
*She's openly and admittedly jealous of my "new women" -- who aren't really "new" and aren't really "women" in that sense, but Mystery is my friend -- despite having said after Bomb in an e-mail that I "should get out there," and that "it would be great" if I found "someone to take [my] mind off" my sadness, and "it's not cheating because we are so done."
*She's now advocating "go slow" and "what's the rush" having initially promoted the "it's done" and "let's just tear the bandage off" approach.
So I'm not sure openings are being squandered here.
