My take on what happened with the ring from a philosophical perspective is that to her it represents a buffer of sorts, or some "marriage super glue." I KNOW she is not ready for things to go to the next level in terms of intimacy, but I also think she knows she wants this to work. Our little blow up may have made her understand that I am NOT getting the impression, no matter how much she SAID things were "ok" and going in the right direction, that we were on the road to reconciliation. Since I told her that basically I needed physical intimacy to feel like things were moving forward and that without it, I was questioning whether I should stay, etc, she maybe figured that this would give me the reassurance I needed so she could buy more time on the other fronts.
IF, and I have NO idea if this theory is right, she did do it for this reason, then it worked. There are a TON of other things we could have used, that we wanted to spend that money on but she really wanted to do this...and now.
As for her flip-flopping like this, well, to be honest, she hasn't really ever SAID she didn't want us to work out. In fact, she has been consistent (and it made me CRAZY to hear this at times) that she didn't ever see us NOT being together.
So this really isn't a total flip, just an EXTREME step on her part to try to prove a point. It worked...for now.
