I’m not sure what your relationship was like, but I finally put it together for me: I used to want to explain myself, to defend myself, to justify myself in the face of a flood of accusations and threats and insults. I used to. But my wife sees any of that as a fight, and she loves a fight, she thrives on it, it makes her feel alive, she craves it, NEEDS it ... and so, in order for me to escape, and to be able to let go and move on, I must not engage with her: it just leads to fighting. Now I say what I need to say—but no longer to her. I write it down (and because we always had the same arguments I go back and edit, a lot). It serves my needs without dragging us back into the chaos that used to be our marriage. One day I may post all that stuff here but for now it’s locked away in the data vault.