Thursday, for whatever reason, I would not drop the rope -- nor would WAW. We were like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. We had an all-day email-a-thon that got pretty nasty. It was like texting, only slower. There were, literally, 106 replies and counter-replies.
Oddly enough it was a bit of a relief for me. She finally started to tell the truth, or reveal the truth perhaps, of her POV, or at least some of it.
Frankly, I shudder to think that her feelings run any deeper than they did that day. By the end of the night -- literally, around 11:45 -- I had been skewered, roasted, grilled, boiled, sauteed, flambeed, flame-broiled, and charcoal-broasted; shoved down the disposal, tossed in the trash, dumped on the dung heap, thrown into the recycling, and spread out on the compost pile.
And that was just from the nice things she said.
It all came out, or at least what I have to assume is a sizable chunk of it all.
Throughout, I framed each and every response very carefully. I began every one with "I wish to state that...." and then simply had the factual response. I used no modifiers (heavily, carefully, deliberately, etc.). I used no "emotion" signifiers ("I can't believe that...."). Where I could not do that, I simply wrote, "I wish to state that I acknowledge this is your POV."
As the day wore into night, she started hammering me on the money. Name a price; name a price. So finally I said, "You're the petitioner -- petition. Make me an offer."
Of course WAW refused to do this, because in a pair-wise bargaining situation under conditions of incomplete information, there is a "first-mover disadvantage" -- you reveal important information about yourself and your implicit price if you go first. This is why tricky car dealers ask you what you "think" you can pay and why an insurance salesman will ask you "what that kind of peace of mind is worth to you." It's why sellers on eBay have hidden "reserves" -- they don't want potential buyers to know what they're willing to take, in the hope that the price is bid up.
Well -- as you can see -- I understand that, too. So we reached an impasse: She wasn't going to bid, I wasn't going to bid. "You're asking me to bet against myself," she wrote, "that's not how it works in litigation." Sez I, this isn't litigation and you're asking me to bet against myself.
Lo and behold, as we DB'ers are chatting with each other, WAW is chatting with someone else. A lawyer. And she informs me of this fact at around 4 in the afternoon, Coastal State time.
And in her long and detailed email -- which reveals that, surprise-surprise -- her lawyer has come up with child support and spousal support figures that are muuuuucccch lower than those 2 other attorneys have calculated (including WAW's own BFF D Attorney).
I tried very hard to stay cool as I read it, and as I formulated my replies, most of which were of the "I wish to state that I will make no reply on this matter until so advised by counsel" variety, I got more and more and more irritated.
And I click "send."
WAW's reply is almost immediate. She is hugely vexed by my responses (because, I suppose, they are not cooperative) because they are "exactly what I'd expect of you" (i.e., you a**hole).
And then there's this:
"And I take it that's a NO on the marriage counseling."
To which I reply: "??????"
And am told to re-read the email.
And there at the end of this immensely long e-mail -- far longer, if you can believe it, than even the longest of Smiley's Person's disquisitions -- is this:
FYI: Before she went into the money details, [L] told me she thought that, based on what I told her, this was a marriage that might be saved, and she gave me the name of a marriage counselor [Coastal City] who she said is "fabulous".
Okay. Now that's not a question. That's a statement. But let's not be obtuse.
It's clearly an opening.
BUT. And it's a big BUT.
We've been to this rodeo before. And her goal in going to MC the first time was, essentially, to bring me around to her POV on the Wonderfulness of the divorce and to surrender my right to alimony.
(No, Gypsy, I'm not mind-reading -- this is what she told me after we terminated the MC, during one of our "better" periods during the in-house separation.)
So this morning, when I got that reply, I wrote that from my POV I was generally open to this idea. My answer was not "no" but was a "qualified yes." Why? Because, sez I, I did not want a repeat of the first round of MC.
And, predictably, she got all p*ssed-off about that.
But this is a pattern, you see. Whenever -- always -- whenever she is held accountable for things she has done or said in the past, she deflects the accountability by attacking me.
So I wasn't surprised. I replied that I was simply being honest, that I was sharing my POV openly, and that I felt some hesitation because of experience and because she wrote in her email, "I have no idea where we will end up or even where I want us to end up."
Though I didn't say this, all of my MWD/DR alarm bells went off -- this is precisely the problem with "therapy" as opposed to solutions-oriented counseling.
Open-endedness can go, by definition, anywhere or (indeed) nowhere. Quite apart from the emotional risk, there is the simple matter of the Benjamins -- I don't have a lot of them to spare.
But there it is. And there we are. We have an appointment -- she made it -- on July 28 in the early Coastal City evening.
And we will see. It will likely be the first time I will have heard her voice since the Batsh*t-Crazy-a-Thon. I suppose that alone is reason enough to go.
But what a curious thing to bring out of a session with her lawyer, let alone to tell me about. After all, there's been so much that she's hidden from me, so much that she's outright lied about.
What a curious thing. Must've been the mojo boogie.
The gypsy carried me all down on Rampart Street I seen everybody that I wanted to meet She said, "Hey Johnny, son listen to me, They got something to knock you off of your feet. It's called the mojo boogie, It's called the mojo boogie, You know the mojo boogie, began to slide on down.
