I also mentioned at the end that he's much better at verbal karate than I am, I just can't keep up with him.
I've been lurking on your thread (and quite a few others as well) and I know just what you mean about this as I feel the same way. Between being a naturally nice, accomodating (albeit passsive) person and staying at home with kids for 14 years (little to no "adult" conversation) while he was working in jobs that required daily negotiating, confrontation, and complex verbal machinations, I feel completely overwhelmed and therefore say nothing--it's not worth saying 5 words just to get slammed with 50. This does not help the situation and likely makes it much worse, but I haven't been able to overcome it yet.
