Sunday, October 29, 2006
Is there such a thing as a man who is able to get angry in a healthy way? I'm just frustrated. Mad. Depressed. Worn out.
I was just wondering aloud to my therapist if it's even possible for a man to express anger in a healthy way. "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'healthy'." Don't you love therapist's double-talk? They're like lawyers minus the evil.
(My apologies to my friends in the legal field!)
I contemplated the history I have of men in my life. My mom and my dad both got angry the same way: in the moment, you could almost see them swallow it up, like a big, giant bitter pill; they'd react as little as possible. Say as little as possible. All the while the anguish and bitterness swirled around in their faces. And then they'd gestate that anger for as long as it took for it to finally dissolve somewhere inside them--hours, days, weeks of the cold shoulder, door slamming, foot stomping, passive aggressive behavior against their adversary. That was my dad being mad. I never had a boyfriend who behaved in any particularly memorable way--nobody took a swing, nobody said unforgiveable things or did something drastic. But then, I never lived with any of them, so I was never around to see the daily irritations, the incidental frustrations and such. Shitfoot, however, was quite vocal in his anger, and you can read pages and pages about his inappropriate expressions of it. But then there's Rusty.
Maybe my problem is, as I told my therapist, I've never seen a grown man handle that emotion in a way that didn't destroy someone or something. I don't know what's "normal". I don't know what's "healthy". I can't see the problem coming because I don't know how to recognize that it's a problem. That is, not until it's piled up to my neck and I'm drowning in it wondering how I got here.
I couldn't begin to claim that Rusty hasn't had valid reasons to be angry lately. I can't dispute the things he gets angry about. I'd get angry, too. But I think if I handled being angry in the same ways that he does, this relationship would be long-over. Rusty has a bad habit to just say the things his angry heart feeds him. When I think about the things he's said, I could easily make him out to be an adolescent, foot-stomping, pouty little brat. But it goes beyond that. He says things I can't just sweep under the rug, things I can't just forgive because he's angry.
He's been under a lot of stress lately--and not the typical "Who hasn't?" kind of stress, more like the "How the hell are we going to fix this?" kind of stress. So I get how it's pushing him into a corner and really making dealing with everyday incidental stress really, really hard. And as you can imagine, having a couple of kids who are both going through 'a hard-headed phase' really pushes his buttons. But instead of just telling me they're irritating him, instead of talking about the underlying things that have him stressed out, he's got to greet me with things that sound to me like threats to leave. Or claims that my kids are nothing but a burden to him. And what you say about my kids, you say about me. You can't complain about being the responsible adult in the house while I'm at work and it NOT be a comment on me. I can't separate the two. And I can't listen to his wild exaggerations every time he gets mad ("She's watching cartoons and I can't concentrate, so I might as well not do my homework, so I'm going to FLUNK out of school!") and forget them when he's feeling better. And you can't talk like that to me and then expect me to feel up to having sex 20 minutes later. I can't just wash my hands of it like he does. It doesn't go away for me. And no matter how many conversations we have about it, I can't seem to get him to understand how much it affects me.
I was just wondering aloud to my therapist if it's even possible for a man to express anger in a healthy way. "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'healthy'." Don't you love therapist's double-talk? They're like lawyers minus the evil.
(My apologies to my friends in the legal field!)
I contemplated the history I have of men in my life. My mom and my dad both got angry the same way: in the moment, you could almost see them swallow it up, like a big, giant bitter pill; they'd react as little as possible. Say as little as possible. All the while the anguish and bitterness swirled around in their faces. And then they'd gestate that anger for as long as it took for it to finally dissolve somewhere inside them--hours, days, weeks of the cold shoulder, door slamming, foot stomping, passive aggressive behavior against their adversary. That was my dad being mad. I never had a boyfriend who behaved in any particularly memorable way--nobody took a swing, nobody said unforgiveable things or did something drastic. But then, I never lived with any of them, so I was never around to see the daily irritations, the incidental frustrations and such. Shitfoot, however, was quite vocal in his anger, and you can read pages and pages about his inappropriate expressions of it. But then there's Rusty.
Maybe my problem is, as I told my therapist, I've never seen a grown man handle that emotion in a way that didn't destroy someone or something. I don't know what's "normal". I don't know what's "healthy". I can't see the problem coming because I don't know how to recognize that it's a problem. That is, not until it's piled up to my neck and I'm drowning in it wondering how I got here.
I couldn't begin to claim that Rusty hasn't had valid reasons to be angry lately. I can't dispute the things he gets angry about. I'd get angry, too. But I think if I handled being angry in the same ways that he does, this relationship would be long-over. Rusty has a bad habit to just say the things his angry heart feeds him. When I think about the things he's said, I could easily make him out to be an adolescent, foot-stomping, pouty little brat. But it goes beyond that. He says things I can't just sweep under the rug, things I can't just forgive because he's angry.
He's been under a lot of stress lately--and not the typical "Who hasn't?" kind of stress, more like the "How the hell are we going to fix this?" kind of stress. So I get how it's pushing him into a corner and really making dealing with everyday incidental stress really, really hard. And as you can imagine, having a couple of kids who are both going through 'a hard-headed phase' really pushes his buttons. But instead of just telling me they're irritating him, instead of talking about the underlying things that have him stressed out, he's got to greet me with things that sound to me like threats to leave. Or claims that my kids are nothing but a burden to him. And what you say about my kids, you say about me. You can't complain about being the responsible adult in the house while I'm at work and it NOT be a comment on me. I can't separate the two. And I can't listen to his wild exaggerations every time he gets mad ("She's watching cartoons and I can't concentrate, so I might as well not do my homework, so I'm going to FLUNK out of school!") and forget them when he's feeling better. And you can't talk like that to me and then expect me to feel up to having sex 20 minutes later. I can't just wash my hands of it like he does. It doesn't go away for me. And no matter how many conversations we have about it, I can't seem to get him to understand how much it affects me.
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