I'd agree that you want to avoid both R talks and "withering and crying when he berates" you. However, I also feel you don't want to get angry with H and stand up to him, because that will just give him another chance to blame everything on you.
My father had his own MLC when I was growing up in the house, and I HATED it when my mother would respond to his angry and unreasonable outbursts with withering, crying, etc. He wasn't being fair--but she wasn't being fair to herself, either, by giving away all her power.
So imagine my horror when I realized I'd been responding to my H's angry outbursts in exactly the same way. I was thrown so offbalance by the injustice of what H said, by the fact that this sweet guy was behaving like a monster, etc, etc, that I'd either collapse in a bewildered and miserable heap, or endlessly (and fruitlessly) try to defend myself, escalating the argument and turning into this shrew I hated.
It was only much further along in the process that I reached a point where I detached from his anger. I could see that it was entirely his issue, and vowed never to engage with him when he was angry, or to let him see me in tears. Instead, I'd calmly state, "H, that's not appropriate," and walk away, or just look at him and walk away. One day he admitted later, "When I saw you look at me like that, I knew I'd gone too far." If he followed me, I'd calmly refuse to engage with him. When he saw that I was no longer affected by them, the angry outbursts almost disappeared.
Would a similar approach work for you? You could start by practising in your head what you could say as you walked away, feeling the sense of detachment this would give you.
