Originally Posted by
Tuffgirl 
He gets his needs met by your emotional reaction. So stop letting him have it. You can develop a thick skin to his face and show your hurt elsewhere. Believe me, when it stops working, they stop trying to be giant a$$holes. It's a huge expenditure of energy on their part and keeps feeding that "woe is me, she treats me like crap, I'm gonna have another drink".
That's so true, it is like they feed off of the emotional response. When I finally started finding even a tiny bit of detachment in my AH's presence (which only happened a few weeks ago), I noticed he kept looking at me almost puzzled, like, "hm this is weird, this isn't working like it usually does..." And I never thought of that before, how reacting emotionally feeds into the victim crap, and seemingly confirms for him the feeling mistreated stuff and the justification for drinking, for being abusive, negligent, immature, etc.
Thanks for the insights....!
~emp919