If hd refuses to "get into it" with her no matter what she says, there will be NO escalation. Hd has 100% of the control over whether there will be escalation. It takes two people to fight... if hd refuses to jump into the pit, there will be NO fight/escalation.
Whether right or wrong, I am not proposing that HD stay out of the pit. He has done that enough. He needs to show her, and she must come to understand, that he is willing to get in the pit. If she can respect that, then there need not be any argument. The problem I see is that she does not respect his boundaries, his desires, his wishes, nor his actions when he tries to take a stand. In the end I do not think she believes that he will enforce his wants in anyway.
This is why I think she only understands power. Once she learns that lesson, I think she will not repeat it and they can start to step up to the next level of learning. However if I am wrong, and she does understand power (and she should since she is a lawyer) then why doesn’t she respect HD for his wishes anyway? Why does she force him to resort to the lowest level of relationships? For this, I am speculating that her fear (of whatever it is in her FOO that we don’t know) is strong enough to overwhelm her respect for HD. I don’t see how staying out of the pit will turn this around, it only reinforces her behavior.
The only other explanation I can think of is that she has some legitimate grips which HD is not acknowledging. It seems some of the ladies have been able to clue in on some of these possible issues. I am putting a little more weight on the possibility that HD has not come totally clean with us, or at least that there may be some things he does that is really irritating MrsHD that HD is unaware of.
