Her words to me went something like this: "He is biased. He doesn't believe in this kind of thing (polyamory). I had to spend half the day defending myself from him because he thinks I'm f***ed up!. I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to him at all about me and guy. Me and guy should be the only ones you talk to about this!" She said all this to me basically screaming, in my face, with that kind of look that she reserves for her worst enemies.
Wow. Clearly she was not happy about it. First let me just say that as I said before you do need a support person or group, but what I neglected to mention is it should not be someone that knows your W, and absolutely CANNOT be someone that talks to her. And the reason is what happened above. Anything you say to a mutual friend is going to find its way back to her and she will blame YOU for gathering people against her (even though it may be completely untrue, you will still get blamed). So don't discuss the sitch with mutual friends or with family. Find someone to talk to that doesn't even know your W.
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So I respond: "Ok. Ok. If that's the way you feel." When she's in that kind of mood, I know not to try to be logical with her. It just makes her that much more angry.
Like MrBond said, that's not the proper way to deal with it. That was dismissive. You have to validate her emotions. One thing I've learned through DR, 5 Love Languages and RetroV is that this is not optional, it is CRITICAL. Unfortunately for us guys, we're taught the opposite of validation. We're taught to ignore, dismiss and run like a scalded dog from emotions. So the proper response when she was going through that tirade would have been something like "Wow, you sound extremely angry about this, is that how you feel?" And of course she'll say yes along with some four letter words, then you say "Yes I can yell you're angry, I can see why you would feel that way. I'm sorry, I will work on keeping this from happening again in the future" and to borrow MrBond's line "I'm going to keep our private lives to ourselves". You will be surprised at how much more effective this is. If you can manage to stay calm while saying it and also to use effective listening techniques (make lots of eye contact, no distractions, mirror back what she's saying, encourage further dialog, etc.) even while she's ranting, she will calm down pretty quickly.
