Fighting my way out of the dark Part 5

[Holding]

I have a counter opinion. I think those moments are times you can work on your strength and show your wife that you are changing. Every post you have made today on this topic, is about what your wife is getting out of the conversations. What are you getting? What can you learn from them. How can you show your wife that you are in better control of your emotions and you no longer will allow her to mess with your emotions.

I've tried to handle these convos with STBXW as a way of building my confidence. I want to build myself up so that I can handle whatever she throws at me (and she WILL throw a lot of anger toward me before this is over). I do think I've been moderately successful with that. Maybe "morbid curiosity" was a poor choice of words. It's more of, "I wonder where STBXW is going with this. I'm not afraid of the outcome, so let's see where this goes."

You said earlier that one of your wife gripes was E abuse, and you owned up to it by say, "you would be detach and go days without talking to her". If she is opening up about feelings, why not validate, listen and show your strength emotionally. You no longer have to run, because you are confident about who you are and what you want out of life. She no longer controls your actions, and being a part of a conversation she initiates only shows her that you have 180 one of her gripes.

I agree that this is a 180 for me. I try to validate as much as possible, but I refuse to validate things that are false. She's not going to gaslight me with false accusations. It may go against DB'ing, but I'm expressing confidence by standing up for myself.