“No, I will not let go off my anger! It reminds me not to let other people take advantage of me!” my friend, Randy, shouted at the top of his lungs. His face was bright red as he glared at his wife.
It was 3 am in the morning. I was sitting in their living room after he had called me abruptly at 2 am to say, “This is all your fault!”
Let’s rewind — I had taken his wife out earlier that night for dinner with my family while Randy was at work. It was perfectly innocent. I picked her up and I dropped her home. There was a two hour gap between when I dropped her off and when Randy arrived home from work. Unbeknownst to me, Randy suspected his wife of having an affair and was convinced that she had used the two hour gap to meet with her lover while pretending to be with me.
It turns out, his wife did have an affair. She confessed to it a year ago but asserted that it had ended months ago. That night was simply what it appeared to be. A dinner with me and two hours of downtime while waiting for him to come home.
Only, no amount of facts could change Randy’s mind. His pain, insecurity, and sadness were wrapped in an immense blanket of anger and he held on to it as tightly as he could. He was determined never again to let his guard down.
“I need my anger. It protects me,” he re-affirmed while his wife gave me a helpless look.
It wasn’t always like this. I’ve known Randy my entire life. From the moment I was born in fact. He was my best childhood friend. He was the kindest, most charming, most loving person I knew — an unrecognizable ghost of the person he is today.
I also knew what triggered his spiral into deep anger. I watched as he fueled his anger and wrapped it deeper and deeper around himself. His first ever girlfriend had cheated on him. A deep wound he refused to allow to heal instead fueling it with anger to remind himself never to be so vulnerable again.
I watched as he met the wonderful, bubbly, loving woman that is his wife and allowed his anger to turn him into a controlling, jealous, and paranoid partner. Feeling trapped under his constant suspicion, she ended up doing the thing he feared most. Further imprisoning them both into his spiraling rage and jealousy.
Anger and jealousy— friend or foe?
In most relationship articles, anger and jealousy have one classification — bad. They should be suppressed, dispersed, or never encountered. But these emotions are some of our most primal feelings and there is a reason that they are so intense. They are meant to tell you something. It is important that there are both allowed and dispersed. If managed properly, it can be highly informative of parts of your internal emotional landscape that you may never otherwise have access to. Let me explain.
I classify anger as a “signal” emotion. As an analogy, think of a fire alarm. It is a highly intrusive, obnoxious, and intense signal. It’s screaming at you — “Hey, pay attention to this thing right now!!!”
The alarm is always awful but you wouldn’t want to NOT have a fire alarm because then you wouldn’t know when a simple kitchen fire is about to destroy your entire house. You also want to make sure that once the firemen are on site, that the alarm is turned OFF. To serve their purpose most effectively, alarms are meant to be allowed to be turned on all the time but are also meant to be turned off once you are aware that there is an issue and are dealing with it.
So, in some ways, anger can be a friend. It can remind you of things you need to work on. It gives you access to things you have not dealt with or have forgotten about. If you manage to confront them, it could lead to enormous personal growth.
When Randy was younger and first experienced infidelity, he was too hurt and surprised to be able to process it and simply buried it deep within himself. Perhaps that was the only way he could cope with the intensity of the pain at the time. But I could see that the buried pain stopped him from connecting fully and achieving the deep intimacy he truly craved.
Later, his anger and jealousy gave him a way to reconnect with that pain that he had buried and perhaps this time, deal with it. If he had managed to finally address it, he may have had a beautiful, nurturing relationship with his wife.
But if, like Randy, you choose not to acknowledge that there is a fire and to turn the alarm off — instead simply getting more and more upset that the alarm is so loud, then these intense emotions become your enemy. A powerful one at that.
What happens if you never turn the alarm off
Randy’s alarm was letting Randy know that the way he had been showing up in relationships made him susceptible to hurt and that there was trauma to be dealt with. His anger was saying, “Hey, you need to deal with this past hurt and think about how your actions contributed to it.”
There were many ways that Randy could have turned the alarm off. He could’ve communicated with his wife that his jealousy and controlling behavior stems from a past hurt. He could’ve explained what he needed from her (e.g. to intentionally talk about it, to hear affirmations of her love for him, to be transparent about her relationship and time spent with other men, etc.).
Instead, Randy assumed that every kitchen fire would become a huge fire, so he kept the fire alarm on. Every small action was an indication that a massive fire (i.e. cheating) was just around the corner. Randy felt protected by his anger and jealousy. He felt that as long as he stayed angry and controlled all aspects of her behavior, he wouldn’t be vulnerable. Surely, no fire could occur if the alarm stayed on?
The reality was that he paid a high price for that false security. It became a wall between him and everyone else. As you can imagine, it’s hard to pay someone a visit in their home if a loud fire alarm was ringing. Similarly, it was hard to be around Randy and watch how he treated his wife. In an ironic twist, the very fact that he was angry and jealous guaranteed the only outcome he didn’t want.
Randy became angry and jealous because he truly loved his wife which made him feel vulnerable again. By allowing anger and jealousy to drive his actions, it made him more controlling which in turn, made her feel trapped. Though I will never condone of her cheating, I could see how his behavior may have increased the chances of her doing so.
How to use anger and jealousy as effective alarms
To be fair to Randy, it was objectively true that someone had cheated on him through no fault of his own in the past. It is also objectively true that he had the right to feel anger and jealousy.
However, what determined how he would experience relationships in the next 25 years was how he chose to react to that situation. Instead of using those emotions as a defensive weapon, he could have used it as a “signal” and an opportunity for self-growth. He could have opened up to his wife and allowed her to help heal his pain. Thus, creating a stronger bond between them. He could have used it as a way to identify insecurities and to work on them.
Randy sees his pain as an a protector from hurt when in reality, it’s a wall preventing him from happiness and true intimacy. You don’t have to suffer the same way I’ve watched Randy suffer for the last 25 years. If you experience intense anger and jealousy, here are the steps you can take to effectively use it as a tool for your own self growth:
- Forgive yourself for feeling angry or jealous — It’s normal to have those feelings. It’s how you react to them that’s important.
- Look for patterns for when they occur — Jealousy and anger often have trigger moments. If a previous partner cheated on you while on a business trip, you may feel triggered when your current partner does the same. Knowing when you feel triggered may help you understand the root cause of it and allow you to both anticipate the feeling as well as communicate it.
- Identify if there is a deeper root cause/insecurity — While jealousy and anger present the same way, there may be a different root causes for why each person feels it. Perhaps, you’ve had a parent you felt abandoned by. Perhaps you had a partner where you tried so hard but never felt that it was enough. Perhaps your partner left you for a younger person. All these situations can create deep insecurities which you may be projecting onto your current relationship.
- Ask for help to deal with the fire and to turn the emotions off — Even if you don’t know what’s causing the feelings or how to turn it off, it is always helpful to express what you are feeling. Remember, you may need more than one person to help you. Sometimes, the alarm doesn’t turn off when one fireman gets to the scene but when there are enough firemen to manage the fire. Aside from talking to it with your partner, seek professional help to help unpack and manage it.
Takeaway
We often cannot prevent our present or change our past, but we can definitely create our future. Anger and jealousy are a part of life but suffering because of it does not have to be.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom — Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and renowned psychiatrist.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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