How to approach W about OM

[MrBond]

I think you're misunderstanding what DB-ing is. It's doing what works. Have you actually written down your mini-goals on what behaviors you want to see in your W and see if you can achieve them?

There's more to DB than just GAL. It's changing the WAS's perception of you. Right now you feel like nothing's working because you are just going with the flow. Think of it like an experiment like Pavlov's dog. You do what you can to get positive responses from your W and you do more of them. The first thing to do is to figure out what those actions are to increase the positives.

It's like you're dating someone for the first time. You do everything you can to find out about the person and what makes them happy and do more of it.

Just not too overboard. In your sitch though, your W needs to understand and remember what respect is. She had the A, not you. She is in her "victim" stage. Where she's playing the victim and blaming everyone else for her paranoia but herself. Don't play into it. My W did the same thing. She had threatened to call the cops on me one night because I told her our D was sick and should just stay over at my place for the night since she had fallen asleep. I told her she could come over and visit or even stay over if she wanted to, but she said I was holding our D hostage and it was her day to have her. I told her to stop and that I was thinking about our D and it was about time she started doing the same. I told her she was not going to be playing the victim and make me out to be the bad guy. That it was her decision that she not see the girls every day and to go ahead and call the cops if she felt she needed to. Lo and behold, that night she came over and was very friendly and sorry.

You need to do that from time to time. Give them a dose of reality so they have to think of the consequences they are causing.