It's hard to peg my wife as being manipulative, because I've never seen her that way. But she as always been this strange (in my mind) combination of wanting somebody to make small decisions for her, but always doing what she wanted when it came to her own self-fulfillment. So selfish is probably how I would describe her.

Example of wanting somebody else to make decisions: picking a restaurant to eat dinner at.

Example of pursuing her own fulfillment seemingly without regard to others: the first time she went away for the 10-day meditation retreat, our son was maybe 2 years old. I remember feeling like it's not very much of a "mommy" thing to do, but also wanting to be supportive of her spiritual journey.

As I think back on 20 years my feeling is that the family has been here when she wanted that, and she did her own thing otherwise.

Sometimes when I would go out with friends by myself, I'd return home and she would immediately tell me everything that went wrong while I was gone. It would come across as "filling me in", but what it really communicated to me was "this is what happens when you leave."

She is an only child, by the way.

It feels really good to get this out. She's not a monster by any stretch, but she does ALWAYS come first.