How to manage your anger as a couple
How to find the complicity of the beginnings in his couple? Over time, the couple relationship changes. We move away, we communicate less, we get angry. Yet we still love ourselves. So how to put your couple back on track and find the complicity and laughter that made us fall in love?
All couples argue, it’s a perfectly normal thing when you share a relationship or live together. We share everyday life and it can be a source of frustration, misunderstanding or irritation, which causes disputes and crises. In this context, your anger may tend to take over and spoil good communication between you and your partner. How to manage your anger as a couple, so as not to let it take over?
How to manage your anger as a couple?
When anger is transient and channeled, it can be beneficial to put things flat. After the storm, the couple finds themselves and leaves on a healthier basis. Indeed, it is sometimes enough to make an effort to de-dramatize a situation. There will always be misunderstandings in a relationship, even in the most beautiful love stories. But we must keep in mind that the key to a harmonious relationship is communication in the couple! It is therefore important to succeed in expressing one’s annoyance, not to keep resentment and bitterness in one’s heart but without allowing oneself to be dominated by one’s anger. How do I do this?
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Analyze your anger
Why are you making yourself angry? Ask yourself the question.
Is it because of an unmet need?
For example, you need to be loved, respected in your relationship and you feel like it’s not. Maybe you need and want to see your relationship move forward but it doesn’t take the path you hope for? The source of your anger can also be more pragmatic, with a daily life that exhausts you, a partner who does not help you with household chores or children for example. And you crack, you get angry.
Whatever your unmet need, you have to tell your partner, and if possible outside of an episode of anger. The goal is to calmly exchange on this subject. (How to manage your anger as a couple)
Note that sometimes we get angry, not because of our couple, but because one of our needs is not met in another sphere of our life. And our partner then becomes a kind of punching-ball, a scapegoat for our family, friendly, professional worries.
For example, you suffer from a complicated relationship with your father and you will get angry with your partner but this will only be an outlet. The source of your anger is elsewhere, and so is the solution.
Is it because of the reproduction of a model?
Let’s imagine that you have seen, throughout your childhood, your father or mother get upset for nothing. Your parents talked badly to each other, fought over anything and everything.
There is a good chance that you have inherited either a total rejection of anger,or on the contrary the reproduction of this behavior. Subconsciously, you repeat the parental pattern because you think that this is how a couple communicates. It is a limiting belief due to your upbringing from which you must be freed. It is important that you make a clear distinction between what is your personal anger (an unmet need) and what is the reproduction of this model.
Realize that you are repeating someone else’s behavior. You don’t have to repeat, feed, feed or suffer this anger. Detach yourself from this model that should not define the person you are and the communication to put in place for the well-being of your couple.
How to manage your anger as a couple, how to express yourself by channeling it?
To find common ground within the couple and renew the dialogue, it is necessary to take a step back. You have the right to be angry, but you must express it in a clear and non-aggressive way.
The importance of the environment
The environment has a direct impact on the way you express yourself. If you are tired, in a place that makes you uncomfortable or surrounded by extraneous noises, this will play on your mode of communication and give your anger more impact, which is a bad thing. So learn to channel your anger when the conditions are bad to have a discussion or explanation with your partner. Allowing your anger to explode inappropriately will have no benefit for the future and for your couple.
Then, to express yourself well despite your anger, speak as clearly as possible your emotions, sensations and feelings: use the pronoun “I” and not the “you” at all costs. Explain why you are annoyed, upset, why you felt judged or criticized.
Don’t let anger dominate you
If anger is a normal emotion, such as sadness, fear or joy, it should not harm your relationship. Within the couple, arguments are sometimes present, but they must not jeopardize your story. If you feel anger rise in you and overwhelm you, control it so you don’t let it dominate you.
Start by breathing deeply and slowly. Anger doesn’t always go up all at once. You often feel that it rises in you until you explode. So you have to be attentive to this rise in anger. It’s a matter of habit but it’s also easier when you prepare mentally. You are not told to let everything pass, but to learn to channel your anger so that it does not turn into rage or violence. Talking and acting under the blow of uncontrolled anger rarely leaves a couple unscathed afterwards, so take the time to calm down a little so that you can express yourself more calmly.
How to manage your anger as a couple? Avoid confrontation
Even if your anger is totally legitimate towards your partner who has said or done something wrong with you, it will not bring anything positive if you let them dominate you. Talking to the other in anger is like attacking him, and a verbal joust made of screams, tears, reproaches will not help you feel better.
Also, if you feel anger neck submerge, leave the room, get some air for a few minutes, go breathe calmly elsewhere, alone. It is important to bring the pressure down. There is no point in shouting, it is not constructive. You need to calm down before continuing the discussion.
Anger is temporary and usually passes within minutes. The concern is that anger does not pass if you remain in front of the person who triggered it, hence the need to move away from the scene where your anger began to manifest itself.
Learning to manage anger is to avoid hurtful phrases and petty attacks. That is why we must avoid inflaming the situation by procrastination and taking the time to reflect.
Visualize your sources of anger (How to manage your anger as a couple)
An exercise can help you channel your anger, visualizing old sources of irritation. Close your eyes and visualize several past scenes where you got angry. Relive your words, your gestures, your reactions. Feel what it did to you emotionally and even physically speaking. Sadness, disappointment, fatigue, nothing very positive. Now imagine an alternative scenario where you leave the room to avoid the argument. Another where you manage to breathe calmly and talk without off.
Anchor in yourself the reaction model that suits you best by repeating these visualizations once a day after an argument. The day anger rises in you in your relationship, you will have an easier time channeling it and knowing how to react to avoid an unnecessary confrontation. You will then know how to communicate well to solve the problem.
Talk about your anger with your partner
If you are prone to repeated anger, it is important to discuss this anger with your partner. First of all, apologize very quickly after an angry episode, if you have not been able to control it.
Then, after analyzing it, you can talk about it together to explain why you feel anger.
Again, this is not to minimize the purpose of your anger if it is legitimate. Indeed, your partner may have behaved in a way that justifies your irritation. And it is human following a disappointment, a betrayal, a lie, a deep sadness, to react “hot” in a bloody way and to let his anger explode. This anger, if it is punctual and justified, needs to be expressed so as not to keep in itself sources of resentment, bitterness and pain.
Conclusion: how to manage your anger as a couple?
However, what must be remembered is that in the context of the couple, communication can not be done in a healthy and constructive way if each exchange is done in the cries. No matter what the source of your daily annoyance, no situation will be definitively resolved if your only way to do it is to shout at your partner. On the contrary, allowing anger to take precedence over positive communication is the best way to inflame an already conflictual situation.
So yes, express your needs and emotions, but as calmly as possible. The goal is to understand you, to support you while respecting you in order to find a solution and not to let anger gradually distance you from one another.
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