I commend you for your heart to stick this out with her. It's great you won't fall on your sword, but want to give this relationship every chance to make it work.
I don't talk to her about MY intentions to leave. She brings up with some consistence that is what she wants. But yet stays.
Also I'm not talking to her about how a judge will rule.
Ah, ok. Let me explain where my misunderstanding comes from. In
this thread from two weeks ago, you wrote:
I''ll ask if she wants to be with me and she says I don't know like a spoiled child. So I opened a new account for my income and transferred all but $140 out. I told her she will be taken care of until a judge decides what will happen. Legal separation or divorce. She says I threatened "her" livelihood. What? You can't have all the benefits of the partnership w/o the partner. If you want separation that's fine. This is what separation looks like.
I can see where I misunderstood that your effort to show her some of the painful realities of separation was actually done with the intention to try to convince her you want to make it work.
I also think your actions to try to persuade her to stay by showing her the painful reality of "what a separation looks like" - this might persuade her to stay in order to avoid that pain of separating, but it might also would persuade her to shut down and emotionally pull away.
It was probably a smart move to separate your incomes. And when we look at why she is doing what she is doing, her now seeking to restrict your access to some of the guns might be related to your restricting her access to the financial resources she had in the past to sustain her tiny business. Is it fair or reasonable? Nope. But it's also not just something crazy she is doing.
You both need a referee.
The solid and clear boundaries are what I'm working on most now. What I will and won't tolerate. For instance I've communicated to her she is no longer permitted to tell me what I think. She may ask questions.
Ugh. That's got to be so hard she tells you what you are thinking. That would drive me batty!
Telling someone what they are "permitted" to do is like trying to set a unilateral rule to control how she engages you. It might work to get the outcome you are seeking. She might also react by thinking of some other thing about you that she wants to tell you to do differently down the road, and come up with some weird and easy to tear apart reason for it.
A boundary is not about controlling others or telling them what to do. A boundary is about our limits and what we will do to manage those limits. It usually goes even better if someone starts off with, "When you do XYZ, I feel ABC"... and then explains the action they will take about themselves if the person continues to do that behavior.
For example, I have a family member that I have to keep a lot of boundaries with. She used to give lots of comments about how I dress. I tried to tell her to stop... she didn't. I tried to set a rule, "no telling me how to dress in my house." The other person got defensive. Pushed and argued back. We went around and around on this for so long. So then I told her, "when you tell me how to dress, I feel really bad about myself, and I will walk away and not change my dress." She could continue to do the behavior, but I kept my boundary. Eventually, she actually changed her behavior as well, because she realized that no matter what, I was going to maintain my limits. It's harder in marriage, but there are some great books on this and hopefully your therapist can walk you through this even more.
Setting boundaries this way can reduce a power struggle between two people - and right now, you and your wife are in the thick of quite the power struggle. I think the issue with access to the guns are just a symptom of that greater struggle.
These are just thoughts from an outside perspective. I could be totally off the mark still, in which case, total feel free to disregard anything that is not helpful.
