Understanding Anger and Pain in Relationships

As someone who is interested in what causes behavior, I am convinced that the madder you are, the more wounded you have been. It’s hard to think of an angry person as in pain though. Most of us want to get away from someone who is angry. We feel their fierceness and we just want to back away and not have anything to do with them.

I tried to calm him down. I did so three times. The fourth time I just let him rage, and that’s exactly what he did. He raged and raged and raged. And when he was done he got up and left the room. I continued with the wife and soon after the session ended. I felt a lot of emotion in the session and a lot of it was mine. I felt helpless to help him. I felt very sad for his inability to find a way to be understood by his wife. I felt him trapped inside himself and having no way to express himself except with a big booming voice that no one could tolerate.

I was listening to a talk recently and the speaker was telling us about how our brains are wired. He said that when something good happens it doesn’t stick in our brain because our brain treats the good like Teflon. But when something bad happens, our brain acts completely different, it becomes Velcro.

It doesn’t make sense that our own brain would act so contrary to what would be more helpful to us in our lives. It would be much better if all the good things in life were to stick like glue and the bad things would just roll off, but that’s not the way we are wired.

It may be hard to believe, but some people don’t get mad. I mean everyone gets mad, but some people don’t show their anger. This article is about those of us with the first response getting mad and expressing it. This is the way I am wired, and I know there are a lot of you out there wired the same way.

There are many theories about why we are wired the way we are, but I would like to boil it down. It all started when we were children…

When I write this title a part of me winces. It’s the part of me that writes the word “toxic”. This word actually means poisonous, harmful, dangerous, and deadly. So I think it’s only natural to feel this revulsion with the word. And yet, I have heard many people talk about their relationships and label them as “toxic”.

We are all familiar with feeling uncomfortable in our relationships or marriages. I know this happens because all of us are unique and the one we are with may not get us every second and sometimes when they don’t understand us we get our feelings hurt. This is just how relationships go.

All of us who are in a relationship have many things in common. First off, we all probably want it to work. We most likely want to live peacefully with the person we love. Another thing we probably all agree on is that we don’t want to fight. We just want to get along and experience good feelings with each other.

Yes, I believe we can all agree on what we want. Now here’s what we don’t want. We don’t want to get our feelings hurt. We don’t want to get mad at our mate. We don’t want to feel bad about ourselves or work too hard for our partner. I bet we can all agree on what we don’t want too.

As a counselor I often intervene with couples when they start to argue about who said what and who remembers what because that conversation can sometimes turn into a fight. I usually go into some sort of education to help them understand that they each have different brains, life experiences and ways of processing how information is received and stored.

This conversation helps reduce some of the tension and then we can continue our work in the session. But recently I fell victim to feeling so violated because my husband did not remember something I had told him three times!

When you read the title you might say to yourself, “I don’t do that, I don’t withhold affection or love from my person.” The truth, though, is we all do it. Every one of us who is in a relationship does it. That’s because that’s how humans act when they get their feelings hurt. We don’t love our other when we are suffering. That’s a fact.

Think about it. You and your mate are having a disagreement. You feel they did something to you. They feel you did something to them. You are both mad at the other. Are you withholding love from your person then? Of course you are. We ALL do this.

There are lots of reasons to get mad at the people we love. It just seems to happen, sometimes right out of the blue. We don’t plan on getting angry, but as we all know, anger can just come out of nowhere and when it does—well, watch out. Anger is not very pretty.

I know I have been working on decreasing my anger for a long time. It’s not that anger is bad. It’s just that when we say harsh things, yell, or swear at someone we love… Well, there could be a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of damage. I just got tired of cleaning up the mess I made when I got angry.

Most of us are pretty easy going. We have lives that we manage. We might go to work or school and we make out there OK too. So why is it that when we have a disagreement with our partner, the one we love the most, we see RED and want to take their head off?

I know when I feel misunderstood or dismissed by my husband it is a terrible pain. It feels as if he is doing it on purpose. I know logically that is not true. He loves me and does not want to see me upset. In fact, I bet if he knew every pitfall he was about to step into that would make me unhappy, he’d get out a roadmap and avoid them. He doesn’t want to make me upset. I believe your partner feels the same way.

I was thinking about a couple I have the opportunity to help. They love something they created at one time. They both want to get back to feeling what they used to feel from the other person. They are desperate to feel this again. But it’s been a long time and now they are both in pain.

Pain can turn us into bitter creatures. It makes us get mad at the person we love, or freeze them out because they have hurt us. Pain turns us into the worst versions of what we once were; loving people.

I'm retired.

Anger Articles

Understanding Anger and Pain in Relationships

How to Overcome Negative Thinking in Relationships

Do You Get Mad? Read This: Anger Problems and Relationships

Are You Living in a Toxic Marriage? Help is Out There

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up After a Fight

Why We Get So Mad When Our Partner Forgets What We Said

One Reason Withholding Affection Happens in Relationships

Why Misunderstandings Make Us Mad

Coping with Anger: Why We Rage and How to Heal

Dealing with Conflict and Pain in Relationships