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August 1 - August 28, 2023
Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is.
Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is.
As with depression or feeling hurt, we may cultivate guilt in order to blot out the awareness of our own anger.
As with depression or feeling hurt, we may cultivate guilt in order to blot out the awareness of our own anger.
Anger and guilt are just about incompatible. If we feel guilty about not giving enough or not doing enough for others, it is unlikely we will be angry about not getting enough.
Anger and guilt are just about incompatible. If we feel guilty about not giving enough or not doing enough for others, it is unlikely we will be angry about not getting enough.
We know our greatest anger, as well as our deepest love, in our roles as daughters, sisters, lovers, wives, and mothers. Family relationships are the most influential in our lives, and the most difficult.
We know our greatest anger, as well as our deepest love, in our roles as daughters, sisters, lovers, wives, and mothers. Family relationships are the most influential in our lives, and the most difficult.
Learning to observe and change our part in relationship patterns goes hand in hand with an increased sense of personal responsibility in every relationship that we are in.
Learning to observe and change our part in relationship patterns goes hand in hand with an increased sense of personal responsibility in every relationship that we are in.
Rather, I speak here of “response-ability”—that is, the ability to observe ourselves and others in interaction and to respond to a familiar situation in a new and different way.
Rather, I speak here of “response-ability”—that is, the ability to observe ourselves and others in interaction and to respond to a familiar situation in a new and different way.
The “underfunctioning-overfunctioning” pattern is a familiar one in couples. How does it work? Research in marital systems has demonstrated that when women and men pair up, and stay paired up, they are usually at the same level of “independence,” or emotional maturity. Like a seesaw, it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other.
The “underfunctioning-overfunctioning” pattern is a familiar one in couples. How does it work? Research in marital systems has demonstrated that when women and men pair up, and stay paired up, they are usually at the same level of “independence,” or emotional maturity. Like a seesaw, it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other.
What is important is that being at the bottom of the seesaw relationship is culturally prescribed for women. While individual women may defy or even reverse the prescription, it in fact underlies our very definitions of “femininity” and the whole ethos of male dominance.
What is important is that being at the bottom of the seesaw relationship is culturally prescribed for women. While individual women may defy or even reverse the prescription, it in fact underlies our very definitions of “femininity” and the whole ethos of male dominance.
Women are actively taught to cultivate and express all those qualities that men fear in themselves and do not wish to be “weakened” by. And, of course, cultural teachings that discourage us from competing with men or expressing anger at them are paradoxical warnings of how hurtful and destructive the “weaker sex” might be to men if we were simply to be ourselves!
Women are actively taught to cultivate and express all those qualities that men fear in themselves and do not wish to be “weakened” by. And, of course, cultural teachings that discourage us from competing with men or expressing anger at them are paradoxical warnings of how hurtful and destructive the “weaker sex” might be to men if we were simply to be ourselves!
Many of us who fight ineffectively, like those of us who don’t fight at all, have an unconscious belief that the other person would have a very hard time if we were clear and strong.
behavior. As Barbara’s situation illustrates, fighting per se is not the issue. What matters is the degree to which we are able to take a clear position in a relationship and behave in ways that are congruent with our stated beliefs.
There is no formula for the “right” amount of separateness and togetherness for all couples or even for the same couple over time. Each member of a couple is constantly monitoring the balance of these two forces, automatically and unconsciously making moves to restore more separateness (when anxiety about fusion sets in) or more togetherness (when anxiety about unrelatedness sets in). The balance of these two forces is constantly in motion in every couple.
One common “solution” or “division of labor” that couples unconsciously arrange is that the woman will express the wish for “togetherness”; the man, the wish for “separateness.”
We must re-examine our own selves with a view toward discovering what we think, feel, and want and what we need to do differently in our lives. The more we carve out a clear and separate “I,” the more we can experience and enjoy both intimacy and aloneness. Our
Countermoves are the other person’s unconscious attempt to restore a relationship to its prior balance or equilibrium, when anxiety about separateness and change gets too high.
Our job is to keep clear about our own position in the face of a countermove—not to prevent it from happening or to tell the other person that he or she should not be reacting that way.
A wife says to her husband, “I am terribly angry about the way you ignore our son. I feel like he’s growing up without a father.” The real issue not addressed is: “I feel ignored and I am angry that you do not spend more time with me.”
But one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity is to recognize the validity of multiple realities and to understand that people think, feel, and react differently.
It is our job to state our thoughts and feelings clearly and to make responsible decisions that are congruent with our values and beliefs. It is not our job to make another person think and feel the way we do or the way we want them to.
Repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. Ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. Sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck.
In the majority of couples, men sit on the bottom of the seesaw when it comes to emotional competence.
This is the “masculinity” that our society breeds—the male who feels at home in the world of things and abstract ideas but who has little empathic connection to others, little attunement to his own internal world, and little willingness or capacity to “hang in” when a relationship becomes conflicted and stressful.
The majority underfunction in the realm of emotional competence, and their underfunctioning is closely related to women’s overfunctioning in this area.
When the waters are calm, the pursuer and the distancer may seem like the perfect complementary couple. She is spontaneous, lively, and emotionally responsive. He is reserved, calm, and logical. When the waters are rough, however, each exaggerates his or her own style, and that’s where the trouble begins.
It is not just anger and fighting that we learn to fear; we avoid asking precise questions and making clear statements when we unconsciously suspect that doing so would expose our differences, make the other person feel uncomfortable, and leave us standing alone.
Karen was afraid of transforming her anger into concise statements of her thoughts and feelings lest she evoke that disturbing sense of separateness and aloneness that we experience when we make our differences known and encourage others to do the same.
Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.
If we feel chronically angry or bitter in an important relationship, this is a signal that too much of the self has been compromised and we are uncertain about what new position to take or what options we have available to us. To recognize our lack of clarity is not a weakness but an opportunity, a challenge, and a strength.
It is an act of courage to acknowledge our own uncertainty and sit with it for a while. Too often, anger propels us to take positions that we have not thought through carefully enough or that we are not really ready to take.
Our anger can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth and change if it does nothing more than help us recognize that we are not yet clear about something and that it is our job to keep struggling with it.
Diagnosing the other person is a favorite pastime for most of us when stress is high.
Although it can reflect a wish to provide a truly helpful insight, more often it is a subtle form of blaming and one-upmanship.
We are never the first in our family to wrestle with a problem, although it may feel that way. All of us inherit the unsolved problems of our past; and whatever we are struggling with has its legacy in the struggles of prior generations.
Using our anger effectively requires first and foremost a clear “I,” and women have been blocked from selfhood at every turn. We cannot hope to realize the self, however, in isolation from individuals on our family tree.
Why is the question “Who is responsible for what?” such a puzzle for women? Women in particular have been discouraged from taking responsibility for solving our own problems, determining our own choices, and taking control of the quality and direction of our own lives.
As we learn to relinquish responsibility for the self, we are prone to blame others for failing to fill up our emptiness or provide for our happiness—which is not their job.
As we learn to identify relationship patterns, we are faced with a peculiar paradox: On the one hand, our job is to learn to take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and behavior and to recognize that other people are responsible for their own. Yet, at the same time, how we react with others has a great deal to do with how they react with us. We cannot not influence a relationship pattern. Once a relationship is locked into a circular pattern, the whole cycle will change when one person takes the responsibility for changing her or his own part in the sequence.
You and I may think so, but that’s beside the point. Rich does not have a problem with the current situation. He is satisfied with things as they are and he is not interested in making a change. If Lisa does not proceed to take care of what is her problem, no one else will do it for her, her husband included.
Men also have this difficulty balancing the forces of separateness and togetherness; however, they tend to handle anxiety by emotional distancing and disengaging (thus, sacrificing the “we” for the “I”), whereas women more frequently handle anxiety by fusion and emotional overfunctioning (thus, sacrificing the “I” for the “we”).
The sex-role division for these two unhappy and out-of-balance alternatives is hardly surprising. Our society undervalues the importance of close relationships for men and fosters their emotional isolation and disconnectedness.
Triangles serve to keep anxiety-arousing issues underground, and that is why we all participate in them. When a triangle is disrupted and we begin to have a person-to-person relationship with each family member, without a third party interfering, hidden issues surface. This is emotionally difficult, but it also provides us with an opportunity to stop focusing on others and look more closely at our selves.
