HitchHiker:

I thnk you are correct.

I also think my wife gave up some magical thinking. I asked her why she used to overspend. She said "I always figured you would eventually start making lots more money, and the debt I ran up wouldn't matter because you would be able to pay it off. So I figured it was OK to overspend." Now she sees that I probably won't ever make more money, so she feels a need to be more frugal, get a job, etc.

Moreover, she had to decide whether she was going to stay with me. Whether she liked me enough apart from the money to stay. She could have taken her hot new (or returned to) body on the road and found someone else. She chose to stay. So to the extent that she was withholding herself physically and emotionally until I made more money, if she was going to stay, that had to end.

I hope that I too can end some of my magical thinking and deal with the world more realistically as well.

Edited to add: and for the curious, yes she came back to bed after dropping the kids at the bus, and yes, we celebrated the festival of Sukkot by making a marital mitzvah.