Thank you for the great post ref. the analogy of surrendering in a battle really helped for me, as well as the other statments made. I feel one trap I was starting to fall into was that I was so obsessed with following the rules, I really wasn't thinking of what they were designed for and how they are supposed to help! May sound stupid, but you get so caught up doing something, you almost forget what you are fighting for.
Update for those interested. I told W that I am not ready for her to move back into the house until I feel confident that it is the right thing to do. She is unhappy of that but accepting for the time being. She proposed to me ( w/o me even mentioning it ) that we both sign the policy agreement and use that as our guideline. So we both did, we listed our ENs and are going to use that as a guideline. If it works, then I am sure I will have no problem inviting her back into the house soon.
We already hit a speedbump last night and I am wondering how serious about the policy agreement she is. We were discussing our top 5 needs and what exactly they were and why they were important to us. My #4 was Domestic Support (Hadn't even discussed my #1-3 yet). She instantly became defensive and upset saying she works full time and can't cook all the time, she doesnt even like cooking, she thinks that it would be nice if I cooked once in a while (For the record, she works 25-30 hours/week as a hostess, so it is not full time and in the past it has not been her cooking all the time, it usually is both of us fending for ourselves).
This was a major LB for me and made me cosider if she is serious about this or not. She basically took a top EN and threw it in my face and discounted it. I pointed all of this out to her and she was just upset and ended the conversation.
So the battle wages on, I hope we can fix these things but its this type of refusal to change that shows why I am not ready to have her move back in.
