Anger

What are your Hot-Button Issues?

Note: This is the first of a two-part series

What sets you off? Are there predictable landmines that trigger fights, arguments or angry outbursts---in your intimate relationship, with your children or with other close people to you? Here are a list of hot-button issues and emotional triggers, many of which come from Ellen Wachtel in her book We Love Each Other, But... (St. Martin's Griffin). Which of these describe you, your partner or your intimate relationship?

Defusing Anger

Dear Neil: I can feel my husband’s anger, although he doesn’t say anything to me about it. But he is cold and dismissing toward me, has ceased to be affectionate and spends very little time with me alone. I know something is disturbing him, but I am clueless as to what. We have been together 10 years, and twice before he has held in angry emotions until they burst out of him in an exceedingly angry, hostile, raging way that left me devastated for months afterwards. I fear the same thing is about to happen again. Is there any way I can defuse these emo

Anger and Resentment is Related to Your Hurts

Note: This is the second of a three-part series.

How Do I Stop Pushing My Boyfriend Away?

Dear Neil: I am hoping that you can help me get a grip on my inability to trust—before I push away my boyfriend once and for all. It seems as though I conjure up reasons to fear that he is not devoted to me, and then I become extremely anxious, panicky and explosive. So anxious, in fact, that I accuse him of wrongdoing and start a fight. I do this knowing the whole time that I’m being irrational. I have done it so many times that I cannot believe that he is still with me. I am afraid that he will decide that being without me would be easier than

Hidden Issues Often Destroy Relationships

Note: This is the first of a two-part series.

Are you fighting a lot about small petty things? Is the anger or reactivity in your relationship seemingly out of proportion to the issue or conflict that began your fight? Are either of you getting worked up over seemingly small issues, gestures or slights?

If so, there’s a good chance that what you’re really fighting about is not the small petty issue that triggered the fight—but rather deeper, hidden, subterranean issues that so often drive angry, bitter arguments, conflicts, disagreements or fights.

Why Do All Our Trips Get Ruined?

Dear Neil: Can you help me figure out why my girlfriend and I seem to fight a lot when we’re on holiday? We schedule time off, plan the holiday together, talk about it and look forward to it. But when we’re actually on the trip, she gets seriously touchy, reactive, jealous, critical, judgmental, impatient with me, angry—and demeaning. Trip after trip has been ruined because of this, and I wind up coming back home hurt, angry and puzzled. I think we both love each other, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why this happens.

The Faces of Diversion and Distraction

Dear Neil: I sometimes get aggressively hostile toward my boyfriend, even though I know he doesn’t mean me harm with what he says. But when he says something negative or critical of me, or even just something that I’d rather he not feel or (not say), I can get seriously angry, hostile and mean to him, and I get mistrusting. Why am I doing that, and how can I change it?

Losing Control in Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Personal Power Doesn't Require Anger

Dear Neil: Thanks for your recent column on anger. What’s been fascinating for me is to realize how ill-equipped I am to having any reaction other than anger or feeling like a doormat. Learning to rein in anger is freeing, but if people who have relied on anger for power don’t have any other readily available choices besides capitulating, it can lead to a crippling sense of impotence and powerlessness. Without my anger, I became a neutered person around my wife, because I simply do not have the skills to find an alternative between my anger and submission.&

I Put Up My Dukes When...

The following exercise can help you identify when you get angry in your intimate relationship, and can you look beyond your anger and locate the true issues and emotions that cause your anger. Check every statement that describes you at least some of the time in your intimate relationship.

Is Anger Driving Your "Bus"?

Imagine that your life is a bus heading down the streets of your hometown. All your feelings are sitting on the seats—sadness, love, fear, happiness, anger, loneliness, etc.—chatting with each other. All of them are equal in power than the others. And you’re driving the bus. You’re in control of your life.