Keep Your Hands Offa My Mojo

[AlexEN]

...Let me wax statistical (h/t @Coach, @Thinker, and our Big Midwestern City friend who has departed these boards).

Hey, did I just hear my name? I'm not that big... Haven't had that Alaskan yet that you promised... After that, I'll be so big the lederhosen may not fit anymore...

I've not departed... just been in "read only" mode for awhile... Staggering workload hasn't helped matters...

What you're sort-of promoting here, @JonF, is a kind of (wikipedia link) linear regression. It's always struck me, in fact, that that model is at the heart of the DB method -- find out what was "wrong" (the explanatory variable(s)), change the value on that variable (she hated that I wore jeans, so now I wear linen trousers), and -- boom! -- you should observe a different outcome (you become the person only a fool would leave -- ta-da!).

Fair enough.

But the Walkaway isn't a "dependent variable" -- isn't a static outcome or observation.

What we have here is a strategic interaction in which both parties are engaged in (internet link) Bayesian updating. Each person is changing his/her beliefs (in lieu of probabilities) about the other in reaction to observable somethings in the other
[quote=SmileysPerson]My WAW went from being a loving, generous, moral, caring, amazing mother and wife, to a selfish, arrogant, affair-consuming, so-so mother. Am I to believe that I lived with a facade for almost 8 years?

Surely not. But you are to believe that (a) she has changed (though perhaps not/probably not in a permanent way), (b) that that change was (at least from her POV) necessitated by some countervailing set of changes in @JonF, and (c) that whatever changes you make to "bring her back," at the end of the day Back -- Cue Peaches & Herb -- will depend upon --

(1) her next-round evaluation or (i) @JonF, (ii) the marriage itself, (iii) herself, and (iv) @JonF + marriage + herself, and

(2) @JonF's round-after-next-round evaluation of (1).

And even that OVERSIMPLIFIES things! That's just the "real time" clock... That is, not only are the WAS and LBS moving targets at any given moment in time, but the revisionist lens through which the relationship is now seen by either (or both) parties clouds perceptions of temporal "reality" that much more... Which is just another way of saying...

reconciliation is such a low-probability event.