Update: I was on a weeklong solo trip, and now I am back. It was awesome. Things at home - well she has been okay. Extremely sensitive overall and easy to get triggered and straight aways gets nasty if triggered. Other times she is nice. Few days ago, she told me that she has 'come back a bit'. I did not react.
However today she was being over-the-top nasty again. I was doing something with my son, and he went into a wild tantrum. She inserted herself into it and basically took it to a (one-sided) fight while my son was watching. Her tactics are crazy effective, and it did work me up, so I immediately told her that the conversation is over. She left after she realized I was not giving attention. An hour later while I was doing something personal, she came back at me again (this is a very predictable pattern - where she comes back to an argument after it is seemingly over and then makes wild accusations about the previous episode which I thought had ended the conversation). She angrily told me that I treated her like [censored], shouted at her and I was the same as before. Then she started piling on insults, so I got up and left. Her parting shot was to ask me to get out of her space (I was already in a different floor). The truth of the first encounter was that I had told her 'Conversation is over" in a firm tone, twice, after I realized that she was getting into insults and judgements. I have conditioned myself to recognize her provocations with time to spare and not to respond. I did just that, so her accusations are shocking. I know that while the accusations are not real, her feelings are. If she has constructed something in her mind, then that structure is real (to her).
Apologies for writing this out here - it has helped me calm down. I do wonder why I should live with this woman.
