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April 18 - April 20, 2021
Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right.
Women, however, have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger.
Even when society is sympathetic to our goals of equality, we all know that “those angry women” turn everybody off.
Even our language condemns such women as “shrews,” “witches,” “bitches,” “hags,” “nags,” “man-haters,” and “castrators.” They are unloving and unlovable.
When a woman shows her anger, she is likely to be dismissed as irrational or worse.
Why are angry women so threatening to others? If we are guilty, depressed, or self-doubting, we stay in place.
When we behave in this way, our primary energy is directed toward protecting another person and preserving the harmony of our relationships at the expense of defining a clear
Nor is it easy to gain the courage to stop feeling guilty and begin to use our anger to question and define what is right and appropriate for our own lives.
Unlike the “bitches” among us, who are doomed to lose popularity contests—if not our jobs—“nice ladies” are rewarded by society. The personal costs, however, are very high and affect every aspect of our emotional and intellectual life.
Those of us who are “bitches” are not shy about getting angry and stating our differences. However, in a society that does not particularly value angry women, this puts us in danger of earning one or another of those labels that serve as a warning to silence us when we threaten others, especially men.
When we voice our anger ineffectively, however—without clarity, direction, and control—it may, in the end, be reassuring to others. We allow ourselves to be written off and we provide others with an excuse not to take us seriously and hear what we are saying.
What is “de-selfing?” Obviously, we do not always get our way in a relationship or do everything that we would like to do. When two people live under the same roof, differences inevitably arise which require compromise, negotiation, and give and take.
The problem occurs when one person—often a wife—does more giving in and going along than is her share and does not have a sense of clarity about her decisions and control over her choices. De-selfing means that too much of one’s self (including one’s thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is “negotiable” under pressures from the relationship.
The partner who is doing the most sacrificing of self stores up the most repressed anger and is especially vulnerable to becoming depressed and developing other emotional problems.
Or she may express her anger, but at inappropriate times, over petty issues, in a manner that may invite others simply to ignore her or to view her as irrational or sick. A form of de-selfing, common to women, is called “underfunctioning.” The “underfunctioning-overfunctioning” pattern is a familiar one in couples. How does it work?
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.
the 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.
The dilemma is that we may unconsciously be convinced that our important relationships can survive only if we continue to remain one down.
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.
Barbara, like most of us, was putting her “anger energy” into trying to change the other person. She was trying to change her husband’s thoughts and feelings about the workshop and his reactions to her going.
Often we behave as if “closeness” means “sameness.” Married couples and family members are especially prone to behave as if there is one “reality” that should be agreed upon by all.
Many women, like myself, get angry with ease and have no difficulty showing it. Instead, the problem is that getting angry is getting nowhere, or even making things worse.
that I was worrying a lot about our baby and that I hoped for his help and support as I struggled with this. Such an approach would have been quite different from my usual behavior, which involved speaking out at the very height of my anxiety and then implying that Steve was at fault for not reacting the same way as I.
As with cleaning up, men will not begin to do their share until women no longer do it for them.
He did not have to feel upset about the incident because she was doing all the work. The more emotion Sandra displayed, the less Larry felt within himself.
When Sandra stopped doing the feeling work for Larry, the circular dance was broken.
When a woman vents her anger ineffectively (like Sandra complaining to Larry about his parents, which surely wasn’t going to change anything), or expresses it in an overemotional style, she does not threaten her man. If anything, she helps him to maintain his masculine cool, while she herself is perceived as infantile or irrational.
So the central question becomes: “How can I change my steps in the circular dance?”
Maggie was trying to change her mother rather than clearly state her own beliefs and convictions and stand behind them.
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.
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.
We are responsible for our own behavior. But we are not responsible for other people’s reactions; nor are they responsible for ours.
Women often learn to reverse this order of things: We put our energy into taking responsibility for other people’s feelings, thoughts, and behavior and hand over to others responsibility for our own.
“but he sulked and pouted for the rest of the evening. It’s just not worth it.” Again, we see Lisa’s discomfort with change. Sulking and pouting is Rich’s problem, and it is not Lisa’s business or responsibility to fix or take away his feelings. Although no one has died from sulking yet, women, the emotional rescuers of the world, can have a terribly difficult time allowing others just to sit with their feelings and learn to handle them.
First, what unresolved and unaddressed issues with an important other (not infrequently someone from an earlier generation) are getting played out in our current relationships? Intense anger at someone close to us can signal that we are carrying around strong, unacknowledged emotions from another important relationship.
Begin to observe other people’s characteristic style of managing anger and negotiating relationships under stress. How does their style interact with your own?
