Do You Prefer Rage or Effectiveness When You Are Upset in Your Marriage?

You know the kind of anger that fumes silently for a long time and then explodes in a big, noisy flash? You yell, you say things that later on you wish you hadn’t. You get completely unhinged. The more you talk, the larger grows your anger – until you are spent and fall silent. Your explosion is good for releasing energy, but as a device for getting something changed, it’s not so good. Here is a better way:

Confront the fact that you don’t yet give yourself permission to tell what is bothering you when you first get upset. That is why you let your anger build up until you “can’t help yourself” and have to speak.

There probably are a few “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” about speaking up or showing anger that will have to be confronted, as well as a possible fear of the consequences of talking straight that you will need to explore with your partner. (“Would you rather that I share what is on my mind at the time or store things up until I am full of rage and explode at you?”)

You may look quite awesome and feel temporarily powerful when finally you explode and all your anger and resentment come rushing out. Realize that you will be trading all that in for a much less dramatic and controlled effectiveness, when you give yourself permission to just speak up. No huge explosion.  just a measured “Something is going on right now that I need to talk about.”

Make sure that you would rather be effective and get something you don’t like changed than roar but get nothing changed. Once that is clear, you can be on your way to making relationship changes that will work for you – and maybe your partner as well.

Comments

[Geneva]

Sanford writes: "Confront the fact that you don’t yet give yourself permission to tell what is bothering you when you first get upset."

Dr. Sanford, “Something is going on right now that I need to talk about.”

It's not that I don't give myself permission to "...tell what's bothering..." me, as I am fairly assertive and work out of a philosophy of prevention. Rather I think that a large percentage of the problems with many couples is that one or both of the parties are not willing to listen unless they first hear an unwavering appraisal- a very difficult strategy, particularly when dealing with parties when their egos stands in the way of rational, truth seeking dialogue. Very seldom do I roar, and genrally choose my confrontations carefully, as when I do, the whole house is clearly informed, hopefully duly so.
While it is true that holding in anger is more likely to result in outbursts or some sort of self annihalation, I think that one key to the success of working through conflict between intimate parties is to establish guidelines for dealing with differences, and keeping an mutual logue of interests shared by both parties, which is likely to change over time. Thus regular updates are advisable for "...making relationship changes that will work..., hopefully mutually for both parties.