If anger itself isn’t sinful (Is Anger Sinful), but the thoughts of punishment that go along with the emotion, are, how do we negotiate that? How do we not shame ourselves for the feeling but take appropriate responsibility for the sentences and images that arise with the feeling? Isn’t marriage is the most intense relationship with the most possibility of anger? A couple of illustrations: What do we do with this angry thought: “I can’t believe you expect me to serve you while you sit on your fat butt. That’s the last time you’ll get a drink of water from me when you’re just sitting there on your computer.”
Or “What do you mean by cutting me down in front of our friends? Just you wait. Two can play that game.” Or, fill in your own punishing, disrespectful thought. I’m thinking we start with keeping quiet, for a moment at least. If we often feel really angry, that’s something to pray about daily. “Lord, help me keep my own counsel if I feel angry today, until I can bring the hurt up to my spouse with respect.” That prayer is a paradigm of acknowledging the feeling, praying for grace, get in touch with the pain underneath the anger, and bring it up at a time when the anger is not white hot. A key point is to understand that the anger is secondary to the hurt. There’s some pain or fear that provoked the anger. Often, in the closeness of a marriage, it’s some childhood unhealed spot that has been touched. For example, maybe we felt like servants to our father rather than a beloved child. So when a spouse often expects us to serve them, we react strongly. Even if the other person serves us in different ways. We forget that there’s actually a balance in the marital relationship. We feel like that little kid who felt so rejected by her/his father. So that’s the piece to understand. And from our own understanding of our overreaction, we can take more responsibility and understand that the anger makes sense. Then we can tell ourselves the truth that we’re not little kids anymore and we have fundamentally different resources as adults. There are a dozen different questions I can think of that might be asked about this. I’ve sketched what could be a whole series of therapy sessions. Feel free to ask a question that I can respond to in another Tuesday Thought. The Lord bless you and keep you all your days.