Love and Anger: The Wedge Between Our Hearts

I worked with a couple recently. The man was very angry at his wife. The man wanted his wife to end a work situation that he resented. He resented this work situation very much and considered this to be the problem, the only problem in the marriage.

The marriage was suffering. The wife was unhappy. The husband was unhappy. He believed that if she left her work situation the marriage and their happiness level would improve. The wife however, LOVED her work and derived a lot of joy from it.

She felt empowered by it and carried a great sense of pride over what she had accomplished. These feelings were discounted by the husband as proof that he had been left. His anger prevented him from feeling anything except her not valuing him.

Every one of us does something when we are angry. All of us have some kind of behavior that accompanies feelings of being wronged. It’s just how humans are wired.

I was thinking about this after reading a story about a married couple. They love each other. He is deaf and nearly blind. They communicate through sign language where the husband places his hands on the wife’s. That’s how they talk. It was a beautiful story. It told how they fell in love, through communicating with holding each others hands.

The story gave rich details about their lives. It even mentioned something everyone goes through, which some people did not expect. This couple gets mad at each other too. Only when the feelings are big, they still have to connect their hands in order to tell each other what is wrong…

Most of us can relate to feeling some sort of irritation with our mate. I know we try and love them, but we all know we don’t love everything they do. In fact we might even become annoyed or irritated by some of their behaviors.

Some of us even get so frustrated when this happens that we can’t deal with those behaviors anymore so we leave the relationship and look for another partner, less annoying and irritating. But this article is about you staying in the relationship you are in and learning how to deal with your discomfort.

Relationship arguments can be difficult to get through. You fight with your loved one, feel unsafe, and feel hurt. Most of all, you might worry whether your relationship can weather the storm.

It can. Here’s how.

Everyone who gets involved with another person has good intentions. We all believe the relationship will be great and last forever. Everyone thinks this, so if you thought you were alone, you are not. In fact, you’re the same as the rest of us.

We all want to be happy in our relationships. That too is universal. The problem is that most of us, before we find someone, have put ourselves together pretty well. We probably know how to do everything we need to do to live our life and we don’t need anyone’s help. That is what we consider a successful individual.

Every couple goes through difficult moments. No one couple has a perfect relationship. All couples have challenges, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, angry events and more. This is a natural and normal life. The problem for most couples though is that we get hung up in the difficult parts and can’t see our way through.

When something hard happens and we feel disconnected, unloved, or disrespected, we can sometimes believe that our partner doesn’t care for us, or worse, doesn’t love us. This is a terrible feeling of rejection, and if you are in a relationship, you have experienced this moment. Everyone has, if they’ve lived with another person that they’re close to.

When we get into a scrape with the person we love we often wind up in a difficult place. We sometimes hurt and feel unloved. Maybe we get mad at our mate and sulk or lash out. These are very common positions that many couples engage in. No one likes them. They are difficult and unpleasant.

As a couples specialist I am always trying to understand how to explain relationships in the simplest ways so people can improve how they interact with the person they love. And as I was thinking about this concept it occurred to me that there are really two places we end up occupying after a fight. We are either doing something about our partners or we are doing something about ourselves.

Learning how to overcome anger can be a struggle, but you can definitely do it if you put your mind to it.

I was thinking about all the people we know who get mad. You know who they are. They are the ones we are careful around because we don’t want to get them upset. They are the ones who get mad out of nowhere and then there is a problem.

We all know someone or some people like this. Maybe it’s you. I know it’s me. When I was a little girl if something didn’t go my way I got mad. This is what I saw my mother do when she was disappointed or frustrated. This is what I learned to do too.

Figuring out how to control anger issues in your relationship can be challenging. Everyone gets mad. Some of us even blow up.

Controlling anger issues in a relationship means blowing up less often and learning how to minimize the damage when, despite our best efforts, an episode occurs after all.

Dealing with anger in a relationship can be difficult. Anger can push us away from our partner, so learning how to control anger’s influence on our lives and partner is incredibly important. Many of us don’t develop effective tools for dealing with anger until later in life, if ever. If you’re reading this, maybe you could use a helping hand.

If you get angry at your mate, you are not alone. If you get really mad and yell or do other things to your partner when you get upset… again, you are not alone. Anger is pretty common in relationships. And this is not an article about how terrible it is. This is a message about what to do about it.

I'm retired.

Anger Articles

Love and Anger: The Wedge Between Our Hearts

How Anger Cuts Us Off From Our Loved Ones

How to Deal with an Irritating Girlfriend, Boyfriend, or Spouse

Relationship Arguments: How to Survive Them & Love Again

How Relationships Work in The Real World: It’s Complicated

Staying Together Through Anger and Adversity

Conflict in Relationships: Help Make Peace, Not War

How to Overcome Anger, Because Mad Makes a Mess

How to Control Anger Issues in Your Relationship

Dealing with Anger in a Relationship