I saw my IC last night. He says I am carrying a lot right now, and that I could keep carrying it as long as I want, but it is ultimately going to do damage. He feels that I need to confront W and give some sort of time table. In other words, tell her to s**t or get off the pot.
I'm not a big fan of communicated deadlines. I love INTERNAL deadlines, so that YOU know you've got some sort of lifeline out there on your horizon (say, three, six or twelve months from Bomb day), but I don't like communicating them to wayward spouses.
The problem with a communicated deadline of "X" to a cake-eater is that you'll find that they'll continue to cake-eat right up until "X-1", at which point they'll promise you the moon and the stars not to dump their sorry a$$. (Think "giving a pull-out date to a group of terrorists, only in reverse).
Put more clearly, if you tell her, say, that she has "until September 1st to decide," she'll not only cake-eat until August 31st, but you will have given her implicit approval to continue her fogged-out behavior until then.
I do agree with your IC, tho, that you can't keep going on like this. In fact, my more aggressive approach to DBing is entirely based upon how long I think a LBS can hold on. If they're able to handle it really well, I say go for it, but I find that most can't. Not without serious emotional damage and severe hits to their self-esteem.
Puppy
P.S. As for her bagels text, I either wouldn't respond, or I'd text her a "Yep - sorry. I'm a horrible father, starving my kids, and a crappy husband, too." Some sort of sarcastic fall-on-the-sword to take away her attack.
