WAW...Again, Part II

[MrCAS]

I am impressed you kept your mouth shut. Good job, buddy!

I get the ring thing. Honest. I think most of us do...

although as she has also often been doing during these good times, she mentioned at one point that she had those creeping feelings of anger regarding the fact that "we could have had this for the past 10 years" and that "this" (meaning her wanting a divorce) "is what it took for her to finally get what she wanted."

This is quite normal... Really. It is.

I told her it was because I completely understood her feelings and where she was coming from.

This was not good DBing. You are minimizing what she is saying and not validating what she is saying. You had an excellent where you could have owned this instead.

You could have said, "I looked inside myself and saw this as a character flaw I needed to change. I am really sorry that I put you in a position to feel that way." or something along those lines. Re-read the section in the book about validating.

I was going to ask for clarification on what she meant by regret, since to me that word plays into the notion that she still feels like we're done, but I (wisely, I think) decided to just let that dog keep sleeping.

This, on the other hand, was excellent DBing...