Though you didn’t do as I have, maybe things worked out for the better.
Tuesday morning, at about 2 am, W woke up with doomsday thoughts about the fact that she was going to have to have a general anesthetic for this surgery. Thoughts of death, thoughts of what she wanted me to do for our DD5 after her death, etc., filled her head and she shared them with me in the dark. And this: "I know I haven't been a very good wife to you. If I live through this, I promise to be better."
This sounds like my wife. Her past haunts her with thoughts of death (remember that her parents divorced, her dad left, her oldest brother and then her mother died in car accidents). Your wife does not get doomsday thoughts out of thin air. Something in her past is driving her fears and her need to control everything. While she knows she has these fears, the counseling did help her to better see how they manifest in everyday life. She could not really see this before, and it is important, I think, that I bring this to her attention when she starts acting that way again.
So in this way, I those karma points may not be automatically redeemable. You have to redeem them yourself, then stand up for the fact that you are redeeming them for good reason. If your wife is like mine (and I really think she is), then her whole life has been spent protecting herself from reliving some trauma she experienced as a child. (Do you have any idea what that would be?) So she has this tough shell around her that she KNOWS she perpetuates (she flat out admitted as much, didn’t she?) She probably believes she is a good, generous, caring person and cannot understand how she could be seen as so mean by you or others (at least as she rationalizes it in her mind). She probably thinks she is just a victim of circumstance, doesn’t understand why she is villanized, blah, blah, blah…
You, like me, have a certain amount of rescuing behavior, again probably from your FOO. Being the nice guy is really trying to be accepted and loved, not because you don’t think your deserve it, but you know no other way to get it. Your wife needs a protector against her fears. You need to rise to that role, meaning she needs to see you as capable of confronting the dragons in her life. The problem I had with this idea is that when I would do so, it took control away from my wife and her anxiety would set in. So on one hand my wife wants me to take control to protect her, but she does not trust giving up that control to me (or anyone else) because it is just too scary. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This where the counselor helped my wife to understand the catch 22 she put us both into.
But, of course, that's not what I did. Instead, I chose to be the empathetic guy that she sometimes says I am capable of being. I pooh-poohed the thought that she wasn't a very good wife and I didn't even touch the comment about being better in the future.
Whoops! Oh well, you can get better with practice.
Be who you are and say what you mean. You don't have to be cruel to a sick woman but don't pooh-pooh the thought that she wasn't a very good wife unless you mean it. Just tell her you appreciate the thought, or whatever.
Changing habits takes awhile, though. It might help if you got really, really drunk. Just avoid beers with fruit in them.
Stop WaitingFeel EverythingLove AchinglyGive ImpeccablyLet Go
Personally, I would have let it sit for just a moment, and then said "Hey, I'm far from perfect myself, let me tell you." Not relieve her of any obligation, but not present myself as holier-than-thou.
But that's just me. I haven't been laid in 5 years, so make your own adjustments accordingly.
