Yaowen, great post. I'm going to print it out and put it in my self-therapy folder.

Orwellian Nightmare,, I'm coming more and more to understand anger as a very important emotion. It tells us something ain't right, and tells us to do something different. Is she trying to get a rise out of you? If you think it's something like that, it can be easier to not react. That's an issue in my marriage, DH will snip and bait to get a reaction and essentially transfer the anger off himself. Then he can look at me and say, "see, you're the angry one. I don't have a problem."

It's really hard to not react. There's a lot on anger in literature on boundaries. The advice there would be to respond rather than react. Easier said than done. Though it's not healthy in an intact relationship, learning to ignore it in the moment and process it later might help in a dissolving relationship. I think of DH being in a three year old mind set and it's easier to just ignore it, change the subject, etc. Later, you can journal about it, or vent someplace like here.- if you feel a need to.

I use to be in a place where I felt like I had to get the last word and not let anyone "best" me, but later I've learned that there is a lot of power in being able to resist the bait. Still, easier said than done, but anger does serve a purpose.