Is this piecing?

[flowmom]

I see baiting as a real test of DBing and I think that spouses use it subconsciously to test the waters. When your H baits you, your alarms bells should be going off in your head, ringing "careful, careful, careful". Then think about what your goal is and whether what you want to say/do is going to get you closer to your goal.

I have reacted very defensively in recent years in my M. I didn't realize how much it was poisoning our R . I am proud of how I dealt with H baiting me yesterday. What worked in that case was 1. bringing things back to the present, and 2. reminding him of what we're trying to do here (coparenting in this case). I softly defused the grenade that he threw between us. I was calm enough to see that he was in "attack mode" and I was detached enough to not feel the need to engage with that.

If you can pull it off, IMO the best way to deal with it would be to act as if he was gently poking fun at you (which I know he's not, he's probably just indulging in some meanness), and react with some non-snarky, self-deprecating humour. That would be a great illustration that you have changed. You don't want to fight, you want to have fun. If you can't pull off humour, try to react with dignity...instead of defending yourself, act suddenly bored/distracted and leave the room (not in a punishing way). That leaves him alone to figure out if that's the result that he wanted.

"Defense is the first act of war"
-- Byron Katie