Understanding Anger in Marriages

Appropriate vs. Excessive/Misdirected Anger

In order to prevent serious conflicts in marital relationships, it is essential to determine whether existing anger is appropriate, excessive, or misdirected. To make this distinction, it is essential that the spouses understand the nature of anger and develop the ability to express honestly disappointments and stresses which lead to angry toward a spouse in a healthy manner.

Just as there are two types of lipoproteins in the body, one of which is healthy (high density) and one which is damaging (low density), so there are two basic types of anger in marital relationships -one healthy (appropriate anger) and one damaging (inappropriate or misdirected anger). For the health of the marriage, it is essential that the excessive anger be eliminated.

Certain considerations can assist the spouses when conflicts arise in the home. After experiencing anger, the spouse who expressed anger or the recipient of the anger should try to determine whether the emotion is deserved and appropriate or whether it might be exaggerated. Distinguishing between these two different, yet similar, types of anger is critical because each calls for an entirely different response. The response to appropriate anger may be an apology or the effort to be more sensitive to the partner in the future.

The process of distinguishing appropriate and misdirected anger requires a deep understanding of oneself and one's spouse as well as patience and wisdom and may entail help from close friends. It is important to look for the truth in what a spouse is saying. Spouses, who regularly overreact or misdirect their anger, tend to blame their spouse for the painful feelings they experience. Overreacting spouses usually are unwilling to examine how they themselves contribute to the marital difficulties. Some seem to take a certain pleasure in criticizing their spouses and have difficulty making an apology. They do not admit that they overreact and there can be a stubborn refusal to consider that they, too, may have unresolved family of origin or other conflicts.

Understanding

Forgiveness is possible through a process of attempting to understand the emotional development of one's spouse. As this occurs, there is growing awareness that a spouse's behavior can be attributed to their emotional scars, that the spouse loved as much as he/she was capable of loving, and that rarely was the pain deliberately inflicted. Also, the process of forgiveness enhances the ability to understand a spouse's behaviors because anger decreases.

Immediate Forgiveness Exercises

When one feels anger toward a spouse, the immediate expression of this anger can be damaging to the marital relationship. Instead of giving in quickly to the expression of anger, we recommend that the angry spouse try to inwardly reflect a number of times, "I want to understand and forgive" or "I want to forgive and love" until the anger dimishes. This exercise, which we refer to as an immediate forgiveness exercise, should decrease slowly the degree of anger. Only after the angry feelings subside, should the spouse try to communicate. We also recommend the same inner understanding and forgiving exercise when angry with children.

Many of you may believe that neither you nor your spouse could grow in the virtue of forgiveness to such a degree that you would be able to control your anger in this manner. However, if you work on immediate forgivenesss exercises, you will find yourself giving less quickly to the expression of anger toward your spouse. Then, when you try to communicate the reason for your anger, your spouse may be more receptive and less defensive because a discussion can occur without the excessive expression of anger.

The spouse's faith can be helpful also in gaining rapid control of angry feelings. Individuals report that giving their anger immediately to the Lord is helpful. Spouses also discover that giving to the Lord when angry their ultra-sensitivity, selfishness, need for control, impatience or conflict over accepting crosses to be effective in diminishing their resentment.

Clinical experience indicates that in a marriage each partner has some degree of buried anger that they bring to the relationship. The resolution of anger from different stages of life is essential and can be accomplished through the use of forgiveness.

Past Forgiveness Exercises

Unfortunately, some spouses have the mistaken idea that expression of anger is always healthy for the relationship, but this emotion can quickly get out of control. Actually, many spouses overreact in anger because of the failure to resolve resentment from past hurts with their spouse, from the family of origin hurts with a parent, or from other important relationships. Such resentment is regularly released under certain types of stress and pressures and can be misdirected at the person one deeply loves.

Clinical experience indicates that in a marriage each partner has some degree of buried anger that they bring to the relationship. The resolution of anger from different stages of life is essential and can be accomplished through the use of past forgiveness exercises.

Some people blame excessively and exclusively their spouse for their anger. This is especially the case when there has been childhood emotional trauma with parents. This problem can be worked through by helping the spouses understand the degree to which their emotional needs were not met by parents or other significant people from the present or the past.

We expect all spouses to be able to identify a number of areas in which they felt disappointment with each parent and to spend time forgiving their parents at different developmental stages. Although there is resistance to this initially, it is a basic aspect of the forgiveness process. We relate that their was only one perfect family and that we all have gifts but also disappointments and weaknesses from our parents.

The most common sources of anger which spouses bring into their marriage in our clinical experience are from the father relationship, from dating relationships in which they were deeply hurt or used as a sexual object and from divorce.

At marital conferences a question frequently asked by wives is how they can help their husbands with their anger and temper which they believe to originate from unresolved conflicts with their husbands' fathers. We encourgae these women relate to their husbands that forgiving those in their past has helped them and that their husbands might also benefit from forgiving their fathers for past hurts.

Many women whose fathers left the family, had substance abuse disorder or were selfish also help their marriages and families by picturing themselves as girls and teenagers and thinking, "I want to understand and forgive my father for all the ways in which he hurt me, my mother and the family and in which he has damaged my ability to trust my husband."

Finally, we believe much marital conflict could be prevented if past forgiveness exercises for family of origin and dating relationship hurts were part of the Church's premarital programs.

Goal - End the Expression of Anger in the Marriage

The daily exercise of virtues should enable spouses to gain mastery over their anger and other emotions. In his first encyclical, The Redeemer of Man, Pope John Paul II wrote that mastery over oneself is essential to self-giving. This self-giving then is necessary for marital happiness.

Couples are often motivated to stop expressing anger toward one another because of the ways in which this emotion damages their children. The expression of anger between a husband and wife harms children in numerous ways including:

• a fear parents will divorce or separate
• loss of a safe feeling in the home
• psychosomatic disorders including irritable bowel and headaches
• sadness and anxiety disorders
• loss of trust in parents
• a belief that parents don't really care for them
• a modeling and repetition of parental angry behaviors

The expression of anger between husband and wife also hurts them and their marriage in the following ways:

• damages the safe feeling/trust
• makes one fearful of self-giving and of receiving love
• introduces a fear of being hurt
• results in a spouse being distant
• leads to sadness, loneliness and anxiety
• wounds the sense of being a gifted person and a gift to one's spouse
• weakens self-giving to children
• increases sexual temptations
• contributes to drinking, gambling and other compulsive behaviors.

The daily use of immediate and past forgiveness exercises, coupled with the growth in other virtues, regularly enables couples to protect their marriage and children by ending the expression of damaging anger in the home. Most couples come to recognize in the challening healing process that their previous expression of anger was a sign of emotional immaturity.

Progress in Forgiveness

There are specific indicators that one has made progress in forgiveness. These include a decreased feeling of anger, a lessening of anxiety, a feeling of compassion for a spouse or those who have inflicted the hurt, and a greater acceptance of one's past hurts. Finally, as the past has less and less control over the present, there is greater trust and love in the marital relationship.

If the someone is forgiving a spouse and the anger is not decreasing, this may indicate an unconscious association with another else from the past who hurt them in a similar way or a misplacement of their anger. Also, patience may be needed because of the degree of anger which is present or it may be necessary for a period of time to avoid the person from the past one is trying to forgive.