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We may be putting our anger energy into trying to change or control a person who does not want to change, rather than putting that same energy into getting clear about our own position and choices. This is especially true in our closest relationships, where, if we do not learn to use our anger first to clarify our own thoughts, feelings, priorities, and choices, we can easily get trapped in endless cycles of fighting and blaming that go nowhere. Managing anger effectively goes hand in hand with developing a clearer “I” and becoming a better expert on the self.
Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self. This book is about having both.
way. There are few things more anxiety-arousing than shifting to a higher level of self-assertion and separateness in an important relationship and maintaining this position despite the countermoves of the other person.
Women who fall into the peace-maker or “nice lady” category are by no means passive, wishy-washy losers. Quite to the contrary, we have developed an important and complex interpersonal skill that requires a great deal of inner activity and sensitivity. We are good at anticipating other people’s reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. This is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. If only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our
TOGETHERNESS Making a long-term relationship work is a difficult business because it requires the capacity to strike a balance between individualism (the “I”) and togetherness (the “we”). The tugs in both directions are very strong. On the one hand, we want to be separate, independent individuals—self-contained persons in our own right; on the other, we seek a sense of connectedness and intimacy with another person, as well as a sense of belongingness to a family or a group. When a couple gets out of balance in either
“fusion relationships” place us in a terribly vulnerable position. If two people become one, a separation can feel like a psychological or a physical death. We may have nothing—not even a self to fall back on—when an important relationship ends.
If we are chronically angry or bitter in a particular relationship, that may be a message to clarify and strengthen the “I” a bit more.
lives. The more we carve out a clear and separate “I,” the more we can experience and enjoy both intimacy and aloneness.
“I” such a difficult task? There are many factors, but if we keep a narrow focus on the here and now, Barbara’s situation illustrates how scary it can be to move to a higher level of clarity and assertiveness. Barbara could not give up her old ways and try out some new ones without experiencing an anxiety-arousing feeling of separateness and without making waves in her marriage. Since this is true in all relationships, let’s take a closer look.
woman who sits at the bottom of a seesaw marriage accumulates a great amount of rage, which is in direct proportion to the degree of her submission and sacrifice.
we may unconsciously be convinced that our important relationships can survive only if we continue to remain one down.
Sometimes, to develop a stronger “I” is to come to terms with our deep-seated wish to leave an unsatisfactory marriage, and this possibility may be no less frightening than the fear of being left.
Fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and to protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another.
If Barbara is stuck in a pattern of chronic marital fighting and blaming, that may be a sign that she has not negotiated her separateness and independence within her first family and that she needs to do some work here
As a psychotherapist I often help women to clarify and to change their relationships with siblings, parents, and grandparents so that underground family conflicts and patterns will not be replayed—nor buried anger and anxieties pop
Often we behave as if “closeness” means “sameness.”
are especially prone to behave as if there is one “reality” that should be agreed upon by all.
fighting only when we give up the fantasy that we can change or control another person. It is only then that we can reclaim the power that is truly ours—the power to change our own selves and take a new and different action on our own behalf.
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.
After this escalating dance of pursuit and withdrawal proceeds for some time, the woman goes into what therapists call “reactive distance.” Feeling rejected and fed up, she at last proceeds to go about her own business. The man now has even more space than he is comfortable with, and in time he moves closer to her in the hope of making contact. But it’s too late. “Where were you when I needed you!” she says angrily. At this point, distancer and pursuer might even reverse their roles for a while.
we try to change the other person. This other
understandably) becomes upset and defensive.
All the unresolved emotional intensity is likely to get played out in another important relationship, such as that with a spouse, a lover, or, if we ourselves are parents, a child. No less important is the fact that emotional distancing from our first family prevents us from proceeding calmly and clearly in new relationships.
Maggie was de-selfing herself by failing to address issues that mattered to her, and as
a result, she felt angry, frustrated, victimized,
and depr...
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Maggie was trying to change her mother rather than clearly state her own beliefs and convictions and stand behind them. To attempt to change another person, particularly a parent, is a self-defeating move.
real issue here: Maggie’s independence from her mother.
unconsciously tried to protect her mother from loneliness and depression whether, in reality, she wanted this protection or not.
And as long as Maggie chose to fight, or to remain silent on issues that mattered to her, she would never really
leave home. Even if she moved to the moon, she would still be her mother’s little girl.
But she was now aware that fighting was a way of protecting both her mother and herself. And silence was the same. For both fighting and silence would ensure that Maggie would never declare her independence from her mother.
She can express interest in learning more about her mother’s own past and personal history. This is one of the best ways to stay emotionally connected to members of
our family and, at the same time, learn more about our selves (see
Blocking advice-giving—if that is one of the problems—is not the same as cutting off the lines of communication.
As we become more independent we learn more about our family members, not less, and we are able to share more about our selves.
interactions were so heavily based on silence,
sarcasm, outright fighting, and emotional distancing.
Like many fathers, he was most conspicuous by his absence.
the degree of independence that we achieve from our own family of origin is always played out in the following generation.
we can proceed to work on achieving greater independence (and with it, an increased capacity for intimacy and togetherness) at any stage of our lives.
There is nothing inherently virtuous in using “I messages” in all circumstances. If our goal is simply to let someone know we’re angry, we can do it in our own personal style, and our style may do the job, or at least makes us feel better. If, however, our goal is to break a pattern in an important relationship and/or to develop a stronger sense of self that we can bring to all our relationships, it is essential that we learn to translate our anger into clear, nonblaming statements about our own self.
“I feel like I’m not being heard” rather than “You don’t know how to listen.”
The more significant issue for women is that we may not have a clear “I” to communicate about, and we are not prepared to handle the intense negative reactions that come our way when we do begin to define and assert the self.
Karen’s tears may also have been an unconscious attempt to make her boss feel guilty (“See how you’ve hurt me?”)—a frequent practice for women who are blocked from making a direct statement of where we stand.
that disturbing sense of separateness and aloneness that we experience when we make our differences known and encourage others to do the same.
Sometimes such anxiety is based on a realistic fear that if we assume a bottom-line stance (“I am sorry, but I will not do what you are asking of me”), we risk losing a relationship or a job. More often, and more crucially, separation anxiety is based on an underlying discomfort with separateness and individuality that has its roots in our early family experience, where the unspoken expectation may have been that we keep a lid on our expressions of self. Daughters are especially sensitive to such demands and may become far more skilled at protecting the relational “we” than asserting the
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used my anger to clarify a request based on my own personal wants, and not because I sought to become an uninvited authority on how Susan should best conduct herself.
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.
letting go of the notion that it is our job to change other people or tell them how they should think, feel, behave.
