You do seem really defensive when you get less than "vote of confidence" feedback.

If you followed the posts, you'll see that that was a bit of irony (cf, @Lotus).

self-absorbed, career obsessed, family destroying WAW was told repeatedly and shown by YOU to expect "friendy," understanding, supportive behavior...So, now, SP, you come here ranting and raving, "the nerve!"

Ah, my friend, but you're overlooking the decisive element here -- yes, I did all that; yes, I meant all that. But when she WENT BACK to the man she cheated on me with and left me and the children for, and demanded not only that I ACCEPT that two-fold slap-in-the-face but ACCEPT it and sustain Friendiness -- indeed, not only GOING BACK to him, but MAKING EXCUSES FOR HIM to her friends who also couldn't believe she was doing so -- then the offer of Friendiness became null-and-void, because Friendiness is not synonymous with Doormatness.

I mean, here she is made utterly miserable by this character whom she's only been involved with (she says) for 6 months or so, and he not only gets a Second Chance, he gets it without asking -- she just goes and offers it up! "I decided I was too hard on him," she wrote me, if you can credit that! But her husband of 18 years? Father of her children? The very idea of a second chance, she says, is ludicrous.

Look, I have absolutely no problem with her Mr. Someone, whom she met months after moving out on her own and with the presumption that the only thing standing between Us and Divorced Independence was a judge's gavel. Good on her, and bravo for him if he got her to do all the things she wouldn't do for me.

But The Other is beyond the pale -- fool me once, etc., right?

This could and should be rectified with a clear articulation of game change. You aren't responsible for her being an ass, but you cosigned a good while back and are now relishing in your flabergastedness. It gets you whistles and macho reinforcement here but IRL, it just reinforces this BS of you as innocent bystander and she as evil ogre.

Same as above, re: irony and re: difference between Friendiness and Doormatness.

I know in my sitch, with H supporting me financially, he pulls the card of expecting me to accommodate his work. I'm not offended by it, I do what works for me. I see his point of view. If I don't go back every time to "well you left MF, now deal with it," I usually find my way.

I have always accommodated her work; follow the bouncing ball of my objection:

* You, SP, will take second chair professionally for the sake of the children;
* I am leaving you SP;
* I do not want to pay you alimony, SP, because you did not maximize yourself professionally; you are a wussy Not-Man for taking my money, and I hate you for it and will bring it up as often as possible to put you down -- indeed, I will be so single-mindedly obsessed with the issue of money that I will go with you to marriage counseling after D-Day but only (I will tell my friends, but not you) to make you give up your right to alimony by showing you that I "tried" to work it out;
* Great News, WAW! I have an opportunity to maximize myself professionally, relieving you of all alimony obligations, but I must move to do it.
* Oh my god, you are an a**hole, SP, for even entertaining the idea of maximizing yourself professionally because you will be abandoning the children, but do whatever your selfish a**hole self wants to do -- your children will simply be raised by an au pair, but I guess that's what you want since (as she wrote over the weekend) "YOU have always been the only thing you care about."

To borrow a phrase @alive, "are you getting my drift here?"

To me, this is pretty simple. You want more $ and more time with the kids? Maybe if it is too much for her, she'll have to choose.

To me as well. But, as of the last couple days, she still not only EXPECTS, but DEMANDS, that I do the choosing -- and that I choose both NO alimony and MORE child care responsibilities. Heads she wins; tails I lose.

So this is not a case of being hoist by my own Friendiness petard; it's a case of drawing a boundary -- I won't be friends with a woman who by her own admission cannot live her life if it doesn't include the man she betrayed me with and whose sense of a fair outcome is that she gets what she wants, and I voluntarily give up what little the law entitles me to.