@hoosiermama: "so now that it's all out in the open and you're well done, what's next?"
Honestly I don't know. I'm trying, like @aliveandkicking, to be present these days (in the Buddhist sense).
The appointment was made, by WAW, then threatened to be canceled by WAW when I wasn't cooperative on something so trivial I've forgotten what it was. I wrote, "For the record, I didn't say anything about [C]. If you decide not to go, that's your decision, and all I can do is accept that it's your decision. But it is YOUR decision."
That seemed to put the ol' kybosh on cancellation, but as I wrote earlier there's a long road between now and then.
I'm going to try to keep the lines of communication open and improving. I sent her an email, as yet unreplied to (which is good -- means she's not doing her usual knee-jerk misreading / misinterpretation), suggesting we suspend all R talk (to include all D talk, except with respective counsel if necessary), until the appointment so that we maintain whatever it is that passes for a status-quo.
I'm still doing my DB kung-fu -- GALing and TCBing and whatnot -- for me (as usual).
I think I've actually been situationally depressed the last few days. Can't get out of bed in the morn, don't really get anything done during the day, veg out a lot in front of the teevee. My great accomplishment yesterday was getting out of the house and walking down to the local cantina to veg out on their patio and eat a 3-taco combo plato instead of what has become my usual bowl of cereal. So today, though I couldn't get up when I set the alarm, I've been deliberately and consciously TCB around the house here.
With respect to the apology discussion, I'm absolutely on-board with my esteemed colleague @aliveandkicking -- fake apologies are worse than no apology at all -- but like @AlexEN I'm referring to actual, sincere apologies.
I think for those in The Fog of WASdom, an apology is among the most dangerous things out there, along with ILYs, because it appears to me from the sitch's up and down the boards here that WASdom requires the careful and deliberate construction of an alternate reality. Not so alternate that it's like Superman's Bizarro World, but not quite "real" either.
I actually had it described nicely to me by a head-shrinker -- the WAS, he said, looks in a fun-house mirror (you know, the kind that makes you look like a pear or an hour-glass or something) but doesn't see the distortion. To WAS, the image looks "right."
So maybe that's WAW's problem. I don't know. She was never quick with the apology, at least not with me, but she has apologized in the past. Even post-Bomb -- she did clearly apologize for Signore Schmuckatelli, which was pretty brave, though -- and this could be nit-picking because I don't want to diminish that achievement (the apology) of hers -- it was more by way of being "sorry that it happened" and less by way of "sorry I cheated on you."
But I'm going to give her extra-credit for effort regardless because of all the things she might have apologized for -- banging holes in the wall, for example, or chunking a water bottle at my head -- she apologized +/- for the hard thing.
And I actually think it was a bit of a relief for her, because she's referred several times since to him -- unprompted, mind you -- and always in a negative way.
But it's odd. The DB challenge of taking responsibility for yourself really seems to make the Other's unwillingness to do the same stand out in high relief.
And, with respect to a discussion we had on one of the past Adventures of Smiley's Person [which, incidentally, is what the German says in the first line of the first post of this thread -- hat-tip to @PortlandDad], it's one of the things that sometimes makes me wonder about the idea of reconciliation. Is this who she really is? Have I outgrown her?
Well enough of that for now. Looking out my office window I can see that it's going to be sunny and blue and 82 here in Coastal City, and I've got tennis-by-the-sea scheduled for later this evening.
