Anyway, W was trying to go to the grocery to get supplies, and she called me from the driveway to say her car was not starting and she needed me to jump-start it. She had this problem with her car before her trip to Europe, and she never took care of it. I'm thinking to myself, this is the perfect opportunity for her to see what life will be like without me. I was also taken aback by the way she seemed to be angry while asking for my help. I reluctantly decided I would do it if she would be able to ask me in a nice way.
Personally I think you handled this poorly. First of all, why do you think she was angry with you, or angry at all? That's just mind-reading. Maybe she was just really frustrated, after all there was a natural disaster going on and in the middle of it her car won't start. If you felt she was asking angrily, a validating thing to do would have been to say "Are you angry at me? It sounds like it, but maybe you're just frustrated?" Jumping to the conclusion that she is angry and acting out accordingly is classic passive/aggressive behavior.
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So I ask her if she's sure it's her battery. She told me the sounds it was making and was getting frustrated. This is the classic rescue situation she sets up, where she's frustrated with a problem and I would always swoop in to help her and fix things.
Am I understanding right, you were in the house and she was out in the driveway? Why wouldn't you just go out there?
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I also said she needs to communicate clearly if she wants something from me and not play guilt games.
But she DID communicate clearly, here is what you wrote:
"she called me from the driveway to say her car was not starting and she needed me to jump-start it"
What is confusing about that? This all comes off as you trying to punish her, not as you standing up for yourself. And I imagine that's exactly how she sees it.
I'm not trying to beat you up, I mean we do counsel to give the WAS time and space. But I think your timing was all wrong, it was kind of an emergency situation and she did ask you for help, you should have provided it. It's different if she doesn't ask for help and you keep trying to help anyway, that's pursuit. But in this case she asked.
