My Husband Has Begun Leaving Formal Written Depositions on the Kitchen Counter Instead of Talking to Me and Honestly His Documentation Is Impeccable and I Don't Know How to Feel
Beverly. First — the binder. I need you to understand that starting the binder was not a sign of capitulation. It was a sign of partnership. You met Winston in his language. You said, without words, "I see your system and I am raising you a three-ring organizational structure." In twenty-three years of practice I have seen far fewer acts of love than that.
What Winston is exhibiting is an advanced but surprisingly functional condition I call Formal Domestic Documentation Disorder (FDDD), in which an individual — typically methodical, typically someone who once read a book about liability — begins to process the emotional and logistical contents of home life through the framework of legal or quasi-legal written record. It is more common than you think. I have two other active cases. One husband has graduated to exhibits. Tabbed exhibits, Beverly.
To your three questions, in order: Yes, this is communication. Yes, it is remarkably good communication — Winston's lower back deposition alone contains more vulnerable self-disclosure than most couples produce in a calendar year of therapy. And yes, Beverly, I believe you are thriving. You are thriving in a way that has no name yet and would confuse most people at a dinner party, but thriving nonetheless.
My only recommendation is this: file the mustard brief under Household Inventory, not General Correspondence. You will thank me later when the binder requires an index.
Which it will.