My Fault?

As my husband and I were talking over some ...uh... "conflicts" we have had with other people (as in, when somebody bites your head off and you're not sure what just happened or why) we were struggling with how to cope with it. The best advice given to us seems to be to respond with something on the order of "Wow! That's just really inappropriate for you to say!" or "Hey, that was rude!"

In hindsight, that sounds good
because, after all, the comments we were considering really were out of line.

But in the midst of the attack difficulty, it never occurs to us to tell the person he/she is out of line. We just apologize or try to make it better or sit there dumbfounded. Why?

And then it occurred to me: our first inclination is to believe that we did do something wrong ourselves, that we offended, that we made a mistake, that we are the ones who owe the apology. But when you start thinking about it and realize what actually happened (especially when onlookers later confirm that the other person said something shockingly rude) you begin to think of all the things you might've said or should've said. But how do you go back and work out these situations? They're better dealt with when the problem arises. Thing is, we don't automatically think of the attacker as the offender, but always worry about what we did wrong ourselves. And like Gary said, would we want to be different? Do we want to have our default-response to be "It's your fault"? So how do we learn to respond with appropriate shock (and scolding?) to someone who deals with us inappropriately?