Below is something I wrote a while back (before reading TRP) about my divorce. I'm struck by how much it could serve as Exhibit A of why you need to “HOLD FRAME” (i.e. keep your framework in place for what reality -- at least YOUR reality -- is).

Here's what I wrote a while back in talking about my wife's basically lying by FALSELY FRAMING situations:

“Norma” would define whatever the problem was at hand in terms of a framework that was in her favor. The ensuing discussion would then be within that framework. It’s maddening but also very effective.

It’s analogous to someone running a red light, having a bad crash that injures you, and then (falsely) framing the ensuing discussion to be about how the accident was all the fault of you (the injured party). I mean huh!? But if the clearly in the wrong red light runner is “good” (at false framing) they can pull it off.

Here's an example of Norma's false framing when I found a cache of love letters to her:

What happened is that I looked in Norma’s briefcase when she went out one evening. This was after her affair with "Bernard" had already exploded. I was looking for any information that would help me know more about what the truth was about our marriage. I didn’t trust anything Norma was telling me (and for good reason: she was in the midst of going through a series of big time lies on her affair with Bernard.) Although I had pointedly questioned Norma about "Harold", she denied any affair.

Well in her briefcase I found a batch of love letters from Harold to Norma that she was keeping in a “feel good” folder. That folder included writings and drawing from our two small children. It was crystal clear Norma was having an affair with Harold. I was just beside myself.

I remember calling my mom while Norma was still out. I was so upset. I was just crying: “What do I do, what do I do? She’s at it again. ..” My mouth went totally dry. When I tried to drink a glass of water my hand shook so hard that the water literally spilled out all over the floor before I could even take a sip. This was literally the most mind searing and emotional moment in my life. I realized this truly was the beginning of the end for our marriage.

When Norma got home later we talked. But what a bizarre talk. Norma was furious with me. HUH? Shouldn’t that be the other way around? Not with Norma. What she did was to immediately frame the “problem” as being that I had violated her privacy (also employing a hefty amount of her “attack, don’t defend” strategy).

In the conversation that ensued, probably 80% of it was me defending myself for having looked in her briefcase. It was just unreal. The manipulation involved here was just amazing. Yes, I was “wrong” to have looked in her briefcase. But the vastly bigger and more relevant issue at hand was that Norma was still lying to me and in fact was already deep into another affair.

I mean for heaven’s sake. Here we were looking at an issue (her new affair and her lying about it) that was so major that it quite likely spelled the end of our marriage. Yet even with such a end-of-the-marriage issue at hand, Norma tried to shift the focus to something she could criticize me about.

Norma’s bullshit factor and her utter refusal to even look at how wrong she was in the situation was just mind boggling.

Edit: Cleaned up and shortened some wording at the beginning.

Down voting puzzlement: Not sure why my post got severely down voted. Was it the TRP community? Was it from outside of TRP? Perhaps. I made a few posts in other subreddits that people strongly disliked (and tried to down vote everything I've written).

On the down voting ... My story was an example of what NOT to. The story shows how I did NOT hold frame (and so much should have).