How does anger affect relationships? I have seen relationships where it seems anger is all the participants have in common. Other bonds seemingly can’t tolerate any expression of anger. Given that we all get angry sooner or later, shouldn’t the ability to work through strong negative emotion be a part of any healthy connection between two committed individuals?
I have sometimes failed to express anger directly, pretending things didn’t bother me when they did, and then trying to “get even” later through sarcasm or some other indirect means. At one point in my life, I decided to express my unhappiness more clearly. I thought of this new project as “not backing down” or “not pulling any punches”. This approach often retained the sarcasm I was trying to shed; it took time to extract the snarkiness from my “honest communication”.
My early attempts to share negative feelings were often greeted with attempts to guide me back toward my normally peaceful demeanor. My close relations were used to me behaving a certain way. Getting an unusual reaction from me, especially one that made them uncomfortable, was a bit destabilizing to these relationships, as if my passivity had been holding things together.
This process is well know in family systems theory, which is used by family therapists to unravel problems between people with close but conflicted relationships. The family (system) likes to be in balance, and can punish members that challenge the system’s rules. Relational systems can sometimes accept change, but this generally happens only after initial attempts by the system to bring the one seeking change back into line with “the way we do things in this family”. The system can adapt constructively to challenges, but this requires a collaborative process marked by hard work and emotional maturity.
When I expressed my anger directly, got negative feedback, and continued to be emotionally honest anyway, the relational tension was palpable. Agreeing to revert to the status quo would have left me feeling less true to the new awareness I was developing. Newly stabilized relationships were only achieved after the system worked through the disruption caused by my desire to communicate my angry feelings honestly. This disruption can result in the disintegration of relationships — if they cannot adapt to new rules — or a positive change, resulting in more healthy connections.
I have experienced both outcomes, and though disintegration can be very painful, sometimes it is the only way for an individual who has outgrown family rules to keep developing. When forced to choose between remaining in relationships that require my personal stagnation, and ending them in order to continue developing, I have tended to choose the latter. This is never an easy choice, and becomes harder as my investment in the relationship grows. Sometimes the process of choosing a path has taken years, and has never been considered lightly.
Looking back on my life with the benefit of hindsight, I try to have grace for my younger self, and for some of the desperate things I did to either hang onto relationships that were already dead or work out my relational issues in ways that were more disruptive than they needed to be. As we learn, grow, and experience, we get better at applying just the right amount of relational pressure with those we care about most. It is important to be patient, kind, loving and gentle, but it is also important to be honest, transparent, congruent, and emotionally expressive. Sometimes finding the best balance between these competing drives is more art than science, more experiential than logical. But if our intention is based in love, both for our relational partner and for ourselves, we eventually progress down the road of emotional development to a point that is qualitatively healthier and more mature than where we started. The important thing is to stay on the road.
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