Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships (6 page)

Identifying the
real
issues is no easy matter. It is particularly difficult among family members, because when two adults have a conflict, they often bring in a third party (perhaps a child or an in-law) to form a triangle, which then makes it even harder for the two people involved to identify and work out their problems. For example:

A wife says to her husband, “I am terribly angry about the way you ignore our son. I feel like he’s growing up without a father.” The real issue not addressed is: “I feel ignored and I am angry that you do not spend more time with me.”

A husband says to his wife, who is considering a new job, “The children need you at home. I support your working, but I do not like to see the kids and the household neglected.” The real issue not addressed is: “I am scared and worried about your making this change. I am not sure how your career will affect our relationship, and your enthusiasm about this new work is putting me in touch with my dissatisfaction with my own job.”

A wife says to her husband, “Your mother is driving me crazy. She’s intrusive and controlling and she treats you like you’re her husband and little boy all wrapped up in one.” The real issue not addressed is: “I wish you could be more assertive with your mother and set some limits. Sometimes I wonder whether your primary commitment is to me or to her.”

When we learn about triangles (Chapter 8), we will see that it is difficult to sort out not only
what
we are angry about but also
whom
we are angry at.

It is extremely difficult to learn, with our hearts as well as our heads, that we have a right to everything we think and feel—and so does everyone else. It is our job to state our thoughts and feelings clearly and to make responsible decisions that are congruent with our values and beliefs. It is
not
our job to make another person think and feel the way we do or the way we want them to. If we try, we can end up in a relationship in which a lot of personal pain and emotional intensity are being expended and nothing is changing.

There is nothing wrong with
wanting
to change someone else. The problem is that it usually doesn’t work. No matter how skilled we become in dealing with our anger, we cannot ensure that another person will do what we want him or her to or see things our way, nor are we guaranteed that justice will prevail. We are able to move away from ineffective fighting only when we give up the fantasy that we can change or control another person. It is only then that we can reclaim the power that is truly ours—the power to change our own selves and take a new and different action on our own behalf.

In the chapters that follow, we will learn how to put the lessons from Barbara’s phone call into practice. What are these seemingly simple lessons?

First, “letting it all hang out” may not be helpful, because venting anger may protect rather than challenge the old rules and patterns in a relationship. Second, the only person we can change and control is our own self. Third, changing our own self can feel so threatening and difficult that it is often easier to continue an old pattern of silent withdrawal or ineffective fighting and blaming. And, finally, de-selfing is at the heart of our most serious anger problems.

When I saw my husband, Steve, later in the day, I anxiously told him my fears. He responded with uncharacteristic insensitivity. “Forget it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Babies develop at different rates. He’s fine.” His response (which I heard as an attempt to silence me) only upset me further. I reacted by trying to prove my point. I told him in detail what the book said, and I reminded him of the problems I had experienced throughout the pregnancy. He accused me of exaggerating the problem and of worrying excessively.
Nothing
was wrong. I accused him of denying and minimizing the problem. Something
might
be wrong. He reminded me coldly that my mother was a “worrier” and that, clearly, I was following in her footsteps. I reminded him angrily that worrying was not permitted in
his
family, since problems were not to be noticed. And then followed more of the same.

We repeated this
same
fight, in its
same
form, countless times over the next six months as our son continued even more conspicuously
not
to do what the book said he should be doing. The psychologist who tested him at nine months (at my initiation) said that he was, in fact, quite slow in certain areas but that it was too early to know what this meant. She suggested that we wait a while and then consult with a pediatric neurologist if we were still concerned.

Steve and I became even more rigidly polarized in our fights, and we fought with increasing frequency. Like robots, we took the same repetitive positions, and the sequence unfolded as neatly as clockwork: The more I expressed worry and concern, the more Steve distanced and minimized; the more he distanced and minimized, the more I exaggerated my position. This sequence would escalate until it finally became intolerable, at which point each of us would angrily point the finger at the other for “starting it.”

We were stuck. Our years of psychological training and intellectual sophistication went down the drain. It was clear enough that what each of us was doing only provoked a more vehement stance in the other. Yet, somehow, neither Steve nor I was able to do something different ourselves.

“Your baby is fine,” a top pediatric neurologist in Kansas City reported blandly. Our son was almost a year old. “He has an atypical developmental pattern. There are certain babies who don’t do much of anything until they walk.” Sure enough, our son began to walk (right on schedule, no less) without having crawled, scooted, or in any way moved about preceding this. And so ended our chronic repetitive fights.

Later, we were able to recognize the unconscious benefits we got by maintaining these fights. Fighting with each other helped both of us to worry a little less about our son, and deflected our attention from other concerns we had about becoming new parents. But what was most impressive at the time was how irrevocably stuck we were. We both behaved as if there was only one “right” way to respond to a stressful situation in the family, and we engaged in a dance in which we were trying to get the
other
person to change steps while we would not change our own. The outcome was that nothing changed at all.

If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different. In my case, I could have changed my behavior with Steve in a number of ways. Surely, it was clear to me that my anxious expressions of worry only provoked his denial, which then provoked more worry on my part. For example, I might have taken my worry to a good friend for several weeks and stopped expressing it to Steve. Perhaps then Steve would have had the opportunity to experience his own worry. Or, I might have approached Steve at a time when we were close, and shared with him 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. Steve, too, might easily have broken the pattern of our fights by doing something different himself. For example,
he
might have initiated a talk in which he expressed concern for our son.

We all recognize intellectually that repeating our ineffective efforts achieves nothing and can even make things worse. Yet, oddly enough, most of us continue to do
more of the same,
especially under stress. For example, a wife who lectures her husband about his failure to stay on his diet increases the intensity or frequency of her lectures when he overeats. A woman whose lover becomes cooler when she angrily presses him to express feelings presses on even harder, her problem being not that she is unable to get angry but that she’s doing something with her anger that isn’t working and yet keeps doing it.

Even rats in a maze learn to vary their behavior if they keep hitting a dead end. Why in the world, then, do we behave less intelligently than laboratory animals? The answer, by now, may be obvious. Repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. Ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. Sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck.

Sometimes, however, even when we
are
ready to risk change, we still keep participating in the same old familiar fights that go nowhere. Human nature is such that when we are angry, we tend to become so emotionally reactive to what the other person is doing to us that we lose our ability to observe our own part in the interaction. Self-observation is not at all the same as self-blame, at which some women are experts. Rather, self-observation is the process of seeing the interaction of ourselves and others, and recognizing that the ways other people behave with us has something to do with the way we behave with them. We cannot make another person be different, but when we do something different ourselves, the old dance can no longer continue as usual.

The story of Sandra and Larry, a couple who sought my help, is a story about getting unstuck. While the
content
of their struggles may or may not hit home, the
form
of the dance they do together is almost universal. For this couple, like many, was caught in a circular dance in which the behavior of each served to maintain and provoke that of the other. Once we are part of an established twosome—married or unmarried, lesbian or straight—we may easily become caught in such a dance. When this happens, the more each person tries to change things, the more things stay the same.

With unveiled anger in her voice, Sandra listed her complaints. It was evident that she had told her story before. It was also evident that she thought the “problem” was her husband.

“First of all, he’s a workaholic,” she began. “He neglects the kids and me. I don’t even think he knows how to relate to us anymore. He’s a stranger in his own family.” Sandra paused for a moment, drew a deep breath, and continued: “He acts like he expects me to run the house and deal with the kids all by myself, and then when something goes wrong, he tells me I’m crazy to be reacting so emotionally. He’s not available and he never expresses his feelings about things that should worry him.”

“When Larry comes home, and you’re upset about something at home, how do you ask for his support and help?” I asked.

“I tell him that I’m really upset, that I’m worried about our money situation, and that Jeff is sick, and that I had to miss my class, and that I’m going nuts with the baby today. But he just looks at me and criticizes me that the dinner isn’t ready, or tells me that I’m overreacting. He always says, ‘Why do you get so damn emotional about everything?’ He makes me want to scream!”

Sandra fell silent and Larry said nothing. After several minutes, Sandra continued, her anger now laced with tears: “I’m tired of being at the bottom of his list of priorities. He hardly ever takes the initiative to relate to me and he neglects the kids, too. And then, when he
does
decide that he wants to be a father, he just takes over like he’s the only one in charge.”

“For example?” I asked.

“For example, he goes out and buys Lori, our oldest daughter, this expensive dressing table that she’s had her eye on, and he doesn’t even consult me! He just tells me after the fact!” Sandra is now glaring at Larry, who refuses to meet her eye.