@hoosiermama: The complete unpredictability would get on my nerves. It's nerve-grating, that's for sure.
After several days of reflection, I elected to work my mojo and call her out on this nonsense. No validation of feelings; no "hearing;" no presumptive understanding -- I just laid it out, step-wise, in harsh clear bright light.
I wrote a longish e-mail, carefully proofed and edited to meet the @Gypsy Paradigm of "impeccable" words and basically said, "Thanks for letting me see exactly what your true evaluations of me are. I know you're going to try to write it off as 'I was upset' but that's when the truth is revealed -- when your natural defenses are down and the inhibitions that might otherwise lead you to rephrase or cushion what you say aren't present."
I didn't appreciate -- and wasn't going to stand for -- the 3 insults she made and gave her examples of how the bitchy things she said were completely consistent with what she'd said on D-Day and in various batsh*t-crazy-a-thons since and suggested that in my point-of-view the only logical conclusion is that her words are, in fact, reflections of her true beliefs about me.
I also made clear that though I wasn't going to stand for that level of disrespect ever again, I was not going to let it compromise my mojo, that I wasn't going to meet force with force, and that I was going to continue to cooperate in the interest of raising Themselves.
That being said, I committed to leaving the communication channels open but only on mechanical issues relating to the children. I wrote that her phone call was quite helpful in its way and that it taught me to be even more cautious of her and her words than I have been thus far -- that despite the nice things she occasionally says to me, and the nice things about me she occasionally says to me, the soundest course-of-action for me is simply to treat them as de facto lies.
Borrowing a line from Schnarch, I told her that, in my point-of-view, the truth is not something that comes out of her mouth, at least not in my experience of her since D-Day, and that I was going to base all of my evaluations and interactions of and with her on experience only, because she reveals at best Truth-Lite, and even then only under duress and quite begrudgingly.
I reminded her, for example, that it took my spying, my hectoring her for 5 months, and her moving out before there was an admission there'd actually been intercourse with Signore and that even then she concocted this ridiculous story that she barely even remembered it the affair was so trivial -- but that months after concocting that story she was still enthusing to her friends (and me!) about it being the Greatest Ever.
To add presumptive insult to injury (okay, I wasn't that "impeccable") I pointed out that one very likely source for The Boy's troubles this week -- the thing that prompted her snotty phone call -- is the fact that she was mis-dosing him with his medication, and that I had confirmed this fact with his physician. I then cut-and-pasted into my e-mail the SMS text exchange in which I clearly laid out the instructions and which she acknowledged receiving at that time.
In other words, I wrote, all the trouble that led you to make that nasty phone call was very likely of your own making. Yet when the chips were down, and you didn't know what to do, you called me. Maybe having to admit your weakness was too hard, so you put on your Dominatrix Persona -- whereas a normal person might have said, "Hi, I'm having trouble with The Boy, can you help?" you opted for the imperative, "Talk to The Boy. Now!" And to be sure I understood just where I rank, apparently, you took it upon yourself to trot out the Old Reliables. Well, as Wilbur Wright once said to his brother, "That just ain't gonna fly, Orville." You-Called-Me. And you will again -- you know it, and I know it. And you WILL speak to me with respect, if for no other reason than you screwed up, and I bailed you out. And if you can't do that, if you despise me that much, then so be it -- you can bloody well figure out how to fix the problem yourself. Your parenting is Not...My...Job.
Not surprisingly, there was no reply. Down the memory hole. 'Twas ever thus.
Now how does this square with her odd date-asking-out-on? Obviously I can't read her mind, and I can't say for sure, but if I had to hypothesize it would go like this: The guilt she feels at breaking apart the family -- and she claims to feel guilt -- also induces her to try (or, perhaps, to want to try) to salvage some kind of positive affect for me.
As if maintaining a positive, even caring (of a kind), relationship with me post-divorce will assuage the guilt and justify the decision -- "see, it wasn't so bad!" But when she's in crisis, when the hot line is jangling between Washington and Moscow, that notional "get along" veneer is ripped away and her true -- and truly negative -- feelings about me are given free reign.
Just a guess, of course, but an informed one and (I suspect) not one that's far off the mark.
