We are going to close this thread down in a hurry, but I'm enjoying the back and forth.
Here's my question...how many times have you ever had an extended interaction with someone where you were completely oblivious to everything...."it simply was." No thought of positive and negative. After talking with that girl did you think about the interaction...whether you enjoyed it or not? Did she? (and you know the answer is yes). What makes our WAWs/ex-Ws different than a normal person. You already said they aren't aliens.
If you started railing on your W I think she would leave with..."that was a negative". If you did her a huge favor I doubt she wouldn't at least consider that was nice of you. I'm sure our ex-spouses aren't analyzing things like we do, but they sure aren't oblivious to whether something was good or bad. I don't tend to hang around someone I don't like/can't stand/don't want to be around. DO you? They might not think..."that was a positive", but their behavior (or at least my ex) suggests that it was enjoyable enough to want to repeat. My ex-W volunteered that she enjoyed being with me. IOW...she felt positively about being around me.
But I'm sure we try to read something into everything they say and do and that is where we go astray when we are considering if something is a positive or not. It's in looking at the single event and not the big picture. ie, my wife probably didn't mean anything when she asked in an e-mail today.."Did you sleep?". Just being polite. Is that the kind of thing you were talking about Bruce?
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
