Of course not -- never do. Just various and sundry random thoughts.
None of this is really well-formed, as I've been fiddly-farting around with it for the promised "how we write the story" posting, but let me see if I can cobble something together.
It strikes me that there certainly ARE such things as 180s, but it also seems to me that these must -- at least the substantive, not jeans-to-trousers kind -- be far and few between. First, I don't think anyone could bear that many up-endings; second, I don't think LBS can be so completely, systematically f*cked-up that s/he needs to become a different person; third, I don't think anyone can become a different person.
So the perception issue here is key. WAW did not perceive me to have emotional intelligence; it is begging the question (cf, @Greek), however, to assume that I in fact did not. The best we can say is that WAW did not think me to. But I can't control her perceptions.
Why assume, for example, that I wasn't filling her "love tank"? Could it not be equally likely that she simply neglected to go to the filling station? I mean, you can only tell me "I don't want to undress in front of you because you'll get 'ideas'" so many times before I -- yes, even I, the Mystical Smiley's Person -- stop trying.
Moreover, there was no "presto, whammo!" I started counseling in October 2008; she dropped the bomb at the end of January 2009; I was "me" -- or at least growing into "me" -- for nearly 16 weeks before she decided to 86 SP Himself from the saloon. But there was Signore, you see? So I can't control for the fact that she wasn't paying attention. Marital prestidigitation, eh? She's watching the left hand and doesn't see what the right hand is doing.
Now perhaps I'm ever-so-much-more-so, so it's well within the realm of possibility that my Total Manitude just shines so-much-more brightly now, but fax is fax and the fax is that I was Doing the Work well before she hied herself to Upstate City for a taste of strange.
What's happening now -- I would submit -- is that she is becoming aware of what she dumped, after the fact. [This is the unfinished narrative bit I'm working on, so bear with me.]
In literary criticism and sociology and some allied academic disciplines, they speak of how narratives are "constructed" -- that is, how we tell the stories we tell. For example, the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, the Indians loved their brave and plucky selves and cooked turkeys and corn for them on Thanksgiving, then George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, the Redcoats came, and -- boom! -- Ronald Reagan kicks Kommie Azz and America wins.
That's a narrative (and a familiar one). But there's another narrative, right? The Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, pillaged Indian graves and corn storehouses, waged terrorism against the Wampanoag, and were more-or-less utter failures at establishing their new Eden; George Washington not only didn't chop down a cherry tree, he didn't even have wooden teeth; the Redcoats came and, in lots of places, were well-beloved indeed (New Jersey, for example, was a seething hotbed of Loyalist sentiment) and when they left, lots and lots of Americans left with them; and Ronnie Reagan not only had nearly everything ass-backwards about the Soviet Union, he appears more-or-less to have known he did. But he gave a bunch of money to these really ass-kicking anti-Communists in Afghanistan who then hijacked some airplanes and flew them into our buildings and America loses.
So which one is "correct"? Well, both. And neither. And that's the point.
@Greek is very nearly dichotomizing the situation -- there was Before SP and After SP and why o why couldn't After SP have been Before SP?
Nah. Not buying. There's Just SP. What WAW is seeing is what she would have got -- indeed, perhaps even what she already had -- had she constructed a different narrative. (Assuming, of course, that SP would have done more work, which is a strong, but not improbably so, assumption.)
Instead, she went with the he'll-never-change-but-Signore-will-bring-his-Seven-Four-Seven-of-Love-in-on-my-landing-strip story, so hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to court we go.
"Had to live without." Those are powerful words, @Greek. Why not, "Chose to live without." "Opted to live without." "Decided to live without." "Didn't have to live without." "Did everything possible -- or, in this case, didn't do anything possible -- to avoid having to live without?"
All narratives, you see. Which is why The Story matters so much. And, paradoxically, doesn't matter at all.
