Your situation is very closely describe by Schnarch. Go revisit the first 5 chapters. Your problem is one of enmeshment, what Schnarch calls fusion. Your wife’s sense of self is dependent on your view of her and vice versa. So each of you argues the details in order to make the other person reflect back to you how you would like to see yourself.
This is what Corri has long been preaching. Break this dependency on each other. Differentiate, as Schnarch puts it. To me your wife acts like she has some serious sexual molestation in her past that makes your enmeshment worse.
“Expecting trust, validation, and shared reality only encourages fights about “what really happened.” If you and your partner are constantly fighting about “reality,” you’re probably dependent on other-validated intimacy and you’re really arguing about whose reality will become the dominant reality and whose anxieties will prevail.” (Schnarch p.108)
This something I am trying to work through as well.
