I recovered well enough from the All-Hallow's-Eve funk. Then had to cope yesterday with what wouldabeen Number 19, or what "they" (who is them what sells lots of "collectibles" LOL) say is the Bronze Anniversary.
Made it through with a good dose of Thought-Stopping but no real funk. Had to listen to a couple of my Mojolational Songs a couple times, mind you, but otherwise survived on the day.
Of course, day after tomorrow it's off to Appalachia for War Bud's Funeral. Which is just going to be a heckuva topper for a truly lousy week, karmically speaking.
I also spent the better part of 3 days' worth of free time writing my "what happened in the past 2 months" dossier. I wasn't trying to be fair to WAW by any stretch of the imagination; I was just trying to recapture -- without benefit of hindsight -- how it was I came to perceive things the way I did.
And doing that, I could see where I'd made some tactical errors to be sure -- but on the whole nothing that would have led (I think) to a decisively different outcome. The bottom line was this: WAW cannot give up the notion -- which would be consistent with my 22 years of knowing her -- that she's in charge.
Recall, you who have been following the Saga of Smiley's Person, that one of the "bads" I did in the marriage -- one of the things I had to 180 -- was that I "let" WAW be in control. Polarity, unmanly, etc.
I'd sort of forgotten, however, just how much of a Control Freak WAW really is. So as I can see, the way I evaluated her seeming re-thinking of the Big D (don't mean Dallas) was this: She took Ultimate Power -- ameliorating her own feelings of powerlessness in the marriage (as told to me and two marriage counselors) -- when she dropped the Bomb. She would define when the marriage ended, and it was then.
She then spent the better part of 7 months, still in charge (in her mind, at any rate) -- Move On, SP! Get Over It, SP! What Are You Waiting For, SP? I'm Done, SP!
Then, Signore Schmuckatelli threw a monkey-wrench ("spanner," for yew ferners) into her game plan by dumping her once she was available. She went into a Funk, professing herself (to Smiley's Person Himself) unlovable, undesirable, unwantable -- he didn't even want me to use me for sex! she lamented.
And then, Smiley's Person started to look different. So I could not trust the timing then and, even in retrospect, I don't think I'd trust it now.
But what chafed my buns was her attitude -- she got to say that the process was changing, that things were moving in a new direction, that now the "only" reason to go to Fab MC#2 (to whom we were going to work co-parenting issues) was to "save our family."
And then, because I didn't leap into her lap like a cocker spaniel puppy, she wigged out, brought Hard Batsh*t-Crazy, went on a Great European Getaway, and found Mr. Someone (Signore il Secondo) whose Himness, I hope, she did not in fact "blow off," poor chap -- though she threatened to (and she didn't mean with a gun, mind you -- "In fact, I'm going out to find someone to bl*w, and I have enough anger in me right now to bl*w it right off," she wrote me, which was supposed to hurt my feelings since she'd never been willing to do that to/for me).
So we had an agreed-upon framework. We had an agreed-upon process. We were going to Fab MC#2. We were taking things slowly, in a step-wise progression, engaging one issue at a time, building confidence, building trust.
And she unilaterally decided, we're going to change that.
No. That's wrong. You don't get to make that decision. You get to ask. And you get to wait for me to answer. Because, of course, I had to stake the progress I've made in my own process against the probability of reconciliation.
And, a la Schnarch, I hadn't experienced any changes in her that would have helped me believe there was a positive probability -- as demonstrated by the fact that she continued to Assert Control (though, ironically, she wanted to divorce me because "I always have to assert control").
Though flirted with the idea of giving that dossier to WAW, at the end of the day I just kept it myself. It was useful because I have more confidence that the decisions I made in the moment were sound -- even with the benefit of hindsight and "if only" and "I wish," I can see objectively that my concerns were well-founded, and I can honestly say I wouldn't have made different evaluations even with the benefit of hindsight.
