"How would you feel???"

For the last two days, Wife has been furious at me that I did some advance work with Lawyer, getting advice and drafting a plan.  She feels betrayed, blindsided that I would "go around behind her back" like that.  (The irony here is so thick it's hard to wade through, but I don't think she sees it at all.)  And so she has not let up asking pointed, insinuating questions, each one in essence a chip on her shoulder that she is just daring me to knock off.  And I keep trying to pull her back to reality:

• This plan is only a draft, not a done deal.
• Lawyer is only an advisor, not a judge; her office is not a courtroom. 
• Therefore Wife can't be compelled by any of this. If she says No, then No.

But then Wife will change tack so that instead of complaining that I am railroading her, she complains about all the money she thinks I have spent.  (I have not given her a sum because it is none of her damned business.)  Why didn't we spend that money on fixing up the house, instead of me personally spending what she insists on calling "common money" doing something so "blatantly hostile" as retaining an attorney?

I remind her that we signed an agreement three years ago splitting our incomes and expenses (but not our assets).  She insists that agreement cannot be enforced in our state, and that she is entitled to anything I earn.  (When she watches herself she limits that to half of what I earn, but she isn't always that careful.)

And so on.  And on.  And on.  Yelling, angry, aggrieved.

Of course, I have realized that what is really behind this is that she is deeply scared.  She doesn't deal with change well -- she even accused me of cruelty because I "deliberately" chose to hit her with this while she was still "grieving" at the fact that we took Son 2 up to Durmstrang so he's no longer living at home -- and she has no trust in anybody.  So as far as she knows, I am conspiring with the Prince of Darkness to have him devour her immortal soul, all for the sport of watching.  When I tell her that she should relax and wait till she looks at the plan because I'm trying to be fair and willing to be generous (except not on custody), she stares at me incomprehendingly as if I were speaking Chinese.

And this evening as I was clearning the dinner dishes she came back for what must have been the dozenth time to screeching at me, "How would you feel if I were the one who had gone to see an attorney behind your back without telling you a word about it, and if I had drawn up a plan for exactly how our divorce was going to be carried out, and then if I told you to come along to my attorney so I could spell it all out for you exactly how it was going to be?  How would you feel???"

I feared it was a risk to answer honestly, but she had been harping on this same point just a bit too long.  So I said, "How would I feel? I don't know. From what I hear, that's exactly what you did do back when I was unemployed and totally defenseless [This was back in 2004, and I tell the essence of that story here.] ... all except the part about dragging me along to the office to hear the news. I guess you decided at the last minute not to go through with it. But you did all the rest. And how did I feel about it? Not so good."

And she fell silent as abruptly as if she had been turned off with a switch.  She stayed silent for the rest of the meal.  So it must have been true.

It's good she didn't ask me how I knew, because I found out by reading her e-mail to Lead Tenor.  Way back in 2004 when it happened, I told her I knew and claimed that one of her friends had called me behind her back because she (this mythical friend) thought Wife was being unkind and unfair to me; but at the time all she did was to deny it staunchly and demand to know which friend had "betrayed" her by "making up" such a story.  And we never got a bill from any attorney, so in the end I figured that either she paid cash or else maybe she was just bragging to Lead Tenor to make herself look worldly and daring.  But this time she didn't deny anything, she didn't argue, she didn't fight ... she just shut up.  So yes, it was probably all true after all.  I figure tomorrow she will tell me that the story is total hogwash, and I'll tell her that if it took her that long to deny it, ... well, ... I can't take the denial very seriously.

I wonder if she'll stop complaining about my unfairness now?  If she'll realize that what goes around, comes around?  If she'll see that she doesn't have a scrap of moral high ground to stand on?  Naaah, probably not.  That would be too much to hope for.  But the silence was refreshing, even if it won't last forever.
__________

P.S.: That plan she wrote, way back when?  It was a gem.  I won't quote it all here, but most of the draconian measures were financial: that the house be put into her name alone, that our bank accounts be put in her name alone (even though I was earning the income), ... stuff like that.  And in one of her e-mails to Lead Tenor she said explicitly that she planned to use access to the boys as a level to extort my signature to this abomination: basically she assumed she would get full custody (they were a lot younger then, so she was leaning heavily on the "motherhood" angle), and she could threaten to prevent me from ever seeing them if I didn't play ball.  Honestly, what I'm offering her is more generous than that ....