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LMo said:
I am a person of action, but the proper "actions" evade me often because the response I will get from him is not that of a rational person.

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Yeah, I know. Sometimes, it's like asking a sales clerk the cost of a shirt, and he answers "Elephant" and then burns down the store. I never know what words or actions will set my wife off.

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LMo said:
I've often thought about the extreme version of tough love and throwing him out of the house, based on the notion that I've been making life "too easy" for him.

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Wow. Absolute deja vu. That's exactly what I've thought for a long time. And I'd try to justify it in my mind, thinking it's just the status-quo-busting shock needed to jolt her out of her everyday slump of depression and get help, and no, it's not because it would feel really, perversely satisfying to take control with such a dramatic gesture after being meek and passive for so long.

I'm understanding now that I'm not trying to do something to her. I'm doing something for my family, and how she acts after that is entirely her choice.