"I love you more than I can tell you and I truly want you to be happy. I respect and trust you to make decisions for your life that are right for you. By the same token, I am going to continue make decisions that I feel are right for me and for our son. You've heard and read my letter and you know where my lines are drawn. I've got to let you go and focus on taking care of me and s7.
But, I can't tolerate this turmoil and tension that we've had lately. It's not good for you, me, us or s7. I want to call a truce and figure out a way to be civil with each other. Regardless of what happens in the future, we will have to work with each other as our son grows up. I'd like to give you a "peace offering" this morning. Here is an external hard drive with all of the server's music, movies and digital photos. Everything that you would have access to when you're connected to the network, you'll have available on your local system. I'm not holding 15 years of shared memories for "ransom". I'll help you get your mp3 player set up to point to this drive, or any other help you need to learn how to access the files. Let my actions speak, instead of my words."
She acted stunned. As I said, I think she was expecting me to bring her aside to start another fight. She apologized again for taking my prescription meds once again, saying that she wasn't digging through my desk drawer trying to find them, but rather trying to find a DVD backup of our photos, since everything has been digital since 1998. Chatted briefly about how all of them were on the external hard drive going all the way back to Colorado (where we lived when we got married 11 years ago). Told her I was late, stood up, bent down and kissed her on the top of her head and said "Peace", and left for work.
This is really nice, CC, but it strikes me as supplicating. I think it would have been MUCH stronger if (and I thought this was where you were going when I read "then I looked her in the eyes and said --") you had accompanied your "peace offering" with a strong new boundary (or three).
I dunno. We've kinda been going around the world lately, doing this same sort of appeasement to foreign foes, hoping it will ingratiate them to us. The press laps it up, and it makes us FEEL good, but the sad reality is that it has netted us, as a nation:
ZERO.
Truces are only effective when they follow an all-out VICTORY. I know this isn't a war, but I do think the dynamics are much the same.
