"Why don't you move out now?" (this evening, part 2)

This story starts here.

I fled the room, as I wrote, but Wife wasn't having any.  She was determined that I was going to hear what she had to say.  I tried sticking my fingers in my ears, but she just shouted over them, "I'll have you know that I change the sheets every time I 'use the bed' in the middle of the day!"

Did I ask this?

I was rattled ... not because she fucked one of her dismal string of boyfriends today but because she was hollering at me.  You could say, "Sure, Hosea, but you had your fingers in your ears. What did you expect?"  But to me it is every bit as aggressive for her to be "defending herself" or "clearing her name" or whatever she chooses to call it this time, even if she does it in a quiet and modulated tone of voice.  It's the content that grates on me so badly, not the decibel level.  So I left the house and walked around the block before making dinner.

Happily we talked about other things over dinner.  She started talking about her conversations with a mortgage banker, interminably (or so it seemed).  But then a few minutes later she started talking about this psychologist who is trying to address her migraines through biofeedback ... even more interminably.  And then the conversation meandered around to something else where she felt the need to "defend herself" and I stopped her.

"You really can't keep doing that, or I'll have to leave the house again. Honestly, when you start talking like that I feel like you are making a stick out of your words and hitting me with it. Really it's better if you just talk about something else."

"I'm sorry you feel like that, Hosea. I don't understand what I can be saying to make you feel like I'm hitting you. (And geez, I'm only defending myself in the first place!)"

"That's it. I'm out of here. I'll be back."

Slam.

I came back in just a couple of minutes, while Wife was putting her dishes in the dishwasher.  I started to put the food away and she headed towards the bedroom.  (The washing machine was still humming in the background.)  Then she turned and said, very calmly, ...

"You know, the divorce is going to take a long time. There are a lot of things we have to figure out, and then even once we've got them all figured out and the forms drawn up it will take the Court a long time to process those forms. So why don't you just move out now? It's obvious that I really grate on you, and you'd be happier. I can't complain about you. These days you have been unfailingly polite. But I still care about you and I can see that you are really suffering by being around me. So maybe you want to rent a studio apartment or something else, just to have a place to live while we go through all the details -- even if in the end it turns out that you are going to own the house instead of me and so you move back in. I think you'd be happier."

I mumbled that I would think about it.  Of course in many ways she is right: it has gotten to the point that I feel almost allergic to her.  In the back of my head I wonder if she has some ulterior motive ... if there is something she can steal or sabotage over weeks that she can't do while I'm at work during the day.  And of course it would cost more: I assume that she'd still want my help with the mortgage and the other household bills, if we hadn't yet come to a final agreement on how to disposition all the stuff.

But in some ways it is very tempting ....