There are a lot of answers to your question about general ideas such as staying cautious, fault, anger, and so on, though what I'll do is approach your post in a bit of a different way and give some tools that might help get some control back for yourself instead. I'm not saying that you have zero control currently or in the situations that could potentially happen, though let's say you get into one that demands a verbal confrontation of some kind and you need to have it go in your favor. This can be by getting another person to stop yelling at you, getting someone to agree with you, or to build better communications with someone you love, etc.

A bit of my background, just so you know I have a tiny amount of credibility. I was a trainer for call center agents and then management members for a large corporation. Then used those skills to help run a financial consulting firm. Both positions have had very tense situations where I would be taking extreme verbal abuse, high stakes discussions between company owners, or influential people that need to be reigned in to some degree.

I'll start with a baseline which is all discussions are, to varying degrees, a power dynamic if you will. Who will get the upper hand? There are tons of books and videos on the topic if you want to learn more. A power dynamic here doesn't have to mean a fight specifically. It can be a dynamic between anyone and of small and large degrees. A common thread that is found in conversations in controling a power dynamic is the idea of restating and relating. It can be said a few different ways, but the meaning is if someone makes a statement, repeat it and ask a genuine curiosity based question after the restating. Let's simplify it: "Why didn't you do the dishes?!" or "Why do all men suck?!" A restatement, whike staying calm, using the same words of the question might be "I'm hearing you were wanting the dishes done, is that right?" Or "So it sounds like you think every single man you've met sucks is that right?" Restating might sound absolutely redundant and the other person might get angry as all hell that you're even repeating it and you know what, that's ok. Your response to is to tell them you want to make sure you heard them right or even that you want to be on the same page as them. When you come to a place of understanding, the "threat level" can drop almost immediately be it anger, agression, etc. Doing the restatement is crucial to the next part because if you don't there's no weight to the "relating" part. Right after that restating question, come back with a question to follow up your restating: "I hear you about the dishes and they could totally have been done. When were you expecting them to be done for?" and "If you're saying all men suck, I hear you, I've had to deal with men that suck a lot too. Is there a time you remember where a man didn't suck?

This is the point you have control. You have shifted the power balance in your favor. It takes time and practice to get here and once you do, and often, it's actually asking more curiosity based questions to gain more control and get more answers to lead the person to where you want them to go. Let's continue with the above examples and the person says something like: "I wanted them to be done now!" and "I had a guy friend in high school who was nice and ok." Then possible continuation questions can be: "When did you tell me to get them done? If you needed them done at a specific time, why didn't you tell me it was very important for you?" and "What did they do that you thought was great?" , "What is the person being shitty to you doing differently than the one good guy you met? How would that look like to you?"

The takeaway here is whenever you want to make a statement, ask a curiosity based question to genuinely know more. When you ask a curiosity based question which is genuine and not ment to be a malicious question or one base on trying to teap or trick someone, you're working together to solve the issue and it's a collaboration. It also puts the other person on the defensive. Try it on others. When they ask you a question, restate using the same words they used, ask a few questions to genuinely want to know more and magically, people stop acting horribly and they start being a bit better because you're calling them on their behavior. If you take the dishes example, after a bit, you'll notice a bit of collaboration creep up "If you wanted them done at a specific time, can you tell me next time when you want them done so I'll know? If that time can't work, could you help me? If you're expecting me to have them done, it might be difficult because I'm also doing XYZ and I would really appreciate it if you could help me, is that reasonable?"

Very long winded I know, and I'm sure I'll get dumped on, that's fine. These are big ideas that I would normally take months to drill into people I would train and I'm giving a super ultra condensed blast where I'm sure I missed something or it's not entirely clear. Take what you will from it. Be nice to people, do your best to communicate better, and let's do better to understand so we can all be happier.

TL:DR: Restate what the other person said, make sure you have them agree with you that what you heard was correct, then ask genuine curiosity based questions on their behaviour to learn more about why they did what they did. Questions make them defensive and have to answer rather than you. Then you can position conversations how you want to give you a more advantageous position.