Even today, after 14 years of marriage, I still fall into the rabbit hole of trying to enforce rules on my wife that would help both of us be happy. She inevitably rebels over time after agreeing to them.
I am not a natural rule-maker or anything, I don't look for control. I look for peace though. It shocks me every time I finally shout and lay down the law for her, and she smiles happily, and says "there he is," usually while running her hands over my chest.
Meaning there is the guy she met, the one she was warned about by the nice guys all those years ago. My wife wants me to be angry, to be a dick to her, this is what she wants and what turns her on. (My issue today is whether or not I want to have to do this for the rest of my life--live and learn.)
I also fall into the trap of seeing her as not knowing when she does what she does, whether breaking rules, violating our agreed budget, or being contemptuous of me. I think we talk this way often here on this sub. But OP is right, they absolutely know when they are being little shits to us. My wife will often tell me so, but only after the fact, once I've (temporarily, until I choke the pill down finally) figured it out.
Even my mother in law, who I deal with often enough and probably more often than my wife does, will act up like a teenaged girl, before smiling happily when I shut her down. She may be in the middle of a week-long tear in which she is vile toward me and everyone in the family, but I'll hear her talking on her phone outside, or to a man checking the meter, happy and pleasant all the while.
She'll come back inside my house and immediately go into cunt mode again. And they're conscious of all of it, fully aware, which I still struggle to wrap my head around.
I still remember when I first found TRP (from Rollo's site) and put it to work years back. Told my wife I would gladly leave her in her 30s if she kept up with her old way of treating me. The change in her demeanor was instantaneous, not gradual at all like you'd think, and she's been a model wife since. And she would shift back to being a grade A bitch in a heartbeat too, fully aware of what she was doing, and I have to remember this.