My ex wife use to do the 'scope creep' method of arguments.
I was nearly always reasonable, logical and calm.
She was shouty, emotional, irrational, illogical and sometimes handy with her fists, although being a foot shorter than me and not a skilled pugilist, rarely managed to land one on me.

So :

1. She'd bitch and rant about things which weren't really what she was feeling pissed off about, probably because even she realised how crazy her annoyance of the week was. Which made it very difficult to address what was pissing her off.

2. The arguments suffered from scope creep. By which I mean, the grounds over which you were arguing shift just at the point when you establish the bullshit-ness about the original bitch. So at that point the bone of contention would suddenly change to something unrelated.

3. The scope creep argument could even carry on so long that all the available argument issues in her arsenal had been used, at which point she started back at page 1. The recursive, self-perpetuating argument when nothing got solved.

4. The original point to argue about was based on one of her misinterpretations, thereby rendering the last 2 hours worth of 'spirited debate' actually avoidable, irrelevant and unnecessary.

5. The supposed trump card:- "Well we wouldn't be in this position if you hadn't have run up the credit card paying the phone bill!" and for the umpteenth time my foil "The phone bill was £400 while I was earning £1600 from research for the media, which I had to do because you didn't work for a living after 12 months into our marriage and became a lazy housewife who I had to provide for as the benefits system expect me to support you with whatever job I can get down in the end of Cornwall (badly paid), and so we slid into something you call mutual debt". To which she answers "And you haven't mown the lawn.....". You get the idea.

I would say- yes, perhaps the better thing to do would not to rise to the inaccuracies and out-and-out lies she was accusing me of, but I found that if you didn't give her your version of events then she would continue anyway, but giving her version of what she THOUGHT you'd say, thereby creating a self-deluding self-feeding hate-spat of angry spite which only usually ended when her wine ran out and she went to bed.

Still, should almost be my 10 year divorce anniversary anytime now :-)
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 4 Oct 2012, 21:15, 6 replies)

Another common ploy
When faced with no better thing to start an argument about, my ex would go for the "bitch about something you did wrong months ago and profusely apologised for back then" gambit.

At least she showed her true colours before the ring was anywhere near my finger.
(lolwhites, Thu 4 Oct 2012, 21:34, closed)

I hate to be a writer of soap opera plots
but it sounds like you were one episode away from her saying 'never mind, we'll have a baby and that will make it all good'.

FALSE!
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 5 Oct 2012, 0:22, closed)

Months?
The length of time she is allowed to go back is derived from the formula (when you met her x 2 x the number of former girlfreinds you've had).
(username failed moderation, Fri 5 Oct 2012, 9:10, closed)

Divorce is very underrated
And can be fun.
( herd of chickens First part only £1.99 and comes with a free, Thu 4 Oct 2012, 22:11, closed)

'Scope creep'
I'm SO stealing that definition!
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 4 Oct 2012, 22:28, closed)

i thought
i would see hundreds of replies to this to be honest. Surely 95% of blokes on here can't be partnered up with the few reasonable women that exist.
My current squeeze has constantly had a go at me in the most relentless fashion about my disgraceful womanising , resulting in flurries of fists and claws in my direction on a few occasions.
It's going to be time to walk very soon , as, believe it or not i have been 100% faithful to any partner I've ever been with. It's driving me fucking insane.
I had to reply because everything in that post is absolutely on the mark.
(boarders You won't catch me with my trousers, Thu 4 Oct 2012, 23:00, closed)

No, we just read it
and are too depressed to write anything in response.
(username failed moderation, Fri 5 Oct 2012, 9:11, closed)

I think I got it from Scott Adam's 'Way Of The Weasel'
It's mostly used to define when someone in a job takes on (without being asked) responsibilities for something they'd like to do, then using that as an excuse why they can't do something they don't want to do as they are already doing so much. It doesn't matter if you don't read Dilbert, the book is a manual to defining all kinds of people you will meet in big corporate engineering companies.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 5 Oct 2012, 0:15, closed)

Re: 4
Are you sure a lot of her misinterpretations weren't willful? Interpreting something in the worst possible way is a great source of conflict for those who thrive on it, while allowing them to portray themselves as the injured party.
(lolwhites, Thu 4 Oct 2012, 23:00, closed)

mm probably was.
because we have a daughter who hasn't yet left their house for her own life, I still get the occasional late night novelty cathartic thing where she rings me up for a rant and I listen until she gets bored of it and rings off. It's like the opposite of a confessional where you admit your sins and feel better- call it an Aggressional where you vent your spleen and feel better.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 5 Oct 2012, 0:18, closed)