When my W asked me for tech support the first few times, I gave it... like it was some "peace offering" and besides, I generally like doing that... but in many ways, I was enabling her... not allowing her to miss me...
So I stopped helping... of course, not as a tactic, but with expectations that she would begin to notice how I DID help in regards to the home and family...
And... she figured out how to get along without me... she found others to fill the voids of support that I filled...
So it bummed me out. I thought to myself, "great, she's just avoiding acknowledging my worth" and further avoiding the damage that our path is going to wreak...
In the end, I have no idea what she was thinking or whether she has been dealing with any loss from our dying M. Nothing I can do about that.
You will need to make the final decisions on what you do from this point forward. Some of the things that MIGHT work for you is following the LRT as much as possible. Reread that section in DR, it begins on page 124.
Detach, GAL, and... try some more 180s... without speaking to your W about it (asking for a temp check from her), be very observant about her future actions and attitudes... believe none of what she says and only 50% of what she does... and make slight adjustments to course correct if you can determine that something you have been doing is being harmful to the sitch...
My motto became...
"If things weren't exactly as they are right now, the future would be so much different."
If you weren't here, working on you, you could very well be D by now. If you weren't here, doing the introspective work on yourself, you may inadvertently allow yourself to re-enter an unhealthy M if the opportunity arose. You know better than that.
There is a HUGE value to exactly the way things are right now for you, and if you are willing to grow from your sitch, it is only from that position that your life now has the potential to be SO MUCH BETTER than it would be, if things were different than they are now...
