Wife is usually very uptight about all sorts of things and gets pissed/hurt if I criticize her in any way. So we're packing up to come home from a weekend trip. All the bags are packed an we're almost ready to go. There are enough bags that I figure it'll take me an extra trip to the car to get all of them (the family will all carry some, but there's still too many). I pick up my smallish camera bag, but haven't loaded myself up yet. And this happens:

"I'm gonna take some stuff to the car."

"You need to take more than just that!"

"What, you think I'm gonna waste a trip on just this?"

"I was being sarcastic."

"You say the stupidest things sometimes."

I grabbed a few more bags and head to the car. Not another word was ever said. Normally saying she said something stupid would be taken as very insulting and she'd get all upset, but this time she just took it. My response was very unemotional and mater of fact, which is unfortunately not normal for me (working on it). But I got to wondering why she didn't escalate this into a lot more and it hit me that maybe her whole attitude in certain situations is really just shit testing. What are your thoughts?

This will be very hard for me to adjust to if it was a shit test. The response has to be just-so in order not to trigger a massive emotional response from her. She used to date a guy who constantly demeaned her and called her stupid and is still very sensitive to that type of thing.

I know AWALT, but are some worse than others with this?