I should charge W rent for how much she has been in my head about this.
Hahaha! Well that is a normal part of it. It'll diminish over time.
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Believe it or not, I've been doing my level best to stay the F away from her as much as possible--to give her that space...
Good!
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...but also perhaps give her a taste of what it would actually look like.
Try to put that out of your head because that is an expectation. "I'm doing X expecting Y to happen." Expectations never go the way you think they will because WAS's behave in completely unpredictable ways. Give her time and space because it's what she needs and it's what you need. But have zero expectations that it'll change anything, because it won't, at least in the short term.
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I tend to live in my head at times and overanalyze--I sometimes want to plan out as many outcomes as possible so I'm prepared mentally.
Yeah I get that. I think we all spend a lot of time doing that early on. The problem is once your W goes WAS then so does rational behavior. There is really no predicting what she will say, or even if the talk will happen at all. Like I said before I've seen this happen many times where the LBS is counting down the days and then will pop in the day after only to say the WAS never mentioned it and acted like they didn't know anything about a "big talk". I was just reading this post from Joe2017, if you're not up on his sitch his ex is trying to recon with him:
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She asked me recently why she doesn’t remember the same things I remember or our kids remember. She said it’s all fuzzy to her. She doesn’t remember A LOT, and some of the things she remembers is wildly different than reality. She can’t explain why she left me for an absolute moron who was 10 years older with no job and ED. She doesn’t remember any gaslighting at all. She doesn’t remember the truly heartfelt conversation we had on the last night that I ever spent in my own home before I moved out and the OM moved in. But she does remember the absolutely hateful verbiage she used to insult me. She remembers trying her best to rob me of my masculinity and self-esteem using the most rancid behavior known to humanity. She remembers telling her son that he could not call me Dad anymore. She just can’t explain why she did it. Any of it.
I mean that's what you are up against with a WAS, they may say evil, hateful, horrible, confusing things and then just a few months later not even remember it! Or if they do remember, it seems foreign to them, like they have no idea why they said or did those things. That's the power of the WAS fog. BELIEVE NOTHING THEY SAY.
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If she is so concerned about how our relationship affects the kids, what exactly does she think S / D will do then?
Again, you're trying to figure out what can't be figured out. Her mind is not a neat place with rows of info that you can walk down to examine and make sense of. You can't sit her down and reason with her, explain the pros and cons and lead her to decide to work on the M. Her mind is like a violent storm thrashing about. When she opens her mouth it's like detritus is getting ejected from the storm. You can't make sense of it because there's nothing to make sense out of. Try and grasp that, it is a key point of DB'ing because the sooner you understand it then the easier it is for you to let go, STFU, and focus on just listening and validating.
