Anger
Why are familial relationships the most dangerous? Whether your style of conflict resolution tends towards actual physical violence or merely loud arguments and passive snark, you may save your very worst for the ones closest to you. How is it that I can spend my day smiling and peacefully bearing offensive behavior from mere acquaintances or perfect strangers, but arrive at home ready to bristle and bark at my spouse for the slightest perceived offense.
It is somewhat of a mystery. I have had theories, of course, such as the following examples. One is most vulnerable and trusting at home; insults wound more deeply. There is more at stake with our loved ones; I guard the margins of the relationship to prevent smaller issues becoming larger ones. The relationship with a spouse or other loved one is more secure, more capable of suffering the rough buffets of anger; my less secure relationships might dissolve permanently if I show my anger. I, like many others perhaps, have a volatility to my personality that needs a safe outlet; it is my role as a spouse, and likewise my spouses role, to absorb the anger of our loved other and provide a safe outlet with forgiveness.
Perhaps these theories have some truth to them. But today, in thinking of anger more generally (and re- reading Robert Thurman's Anger), I wonder if as I struggle successfully against the feelings of anger, as I slowly conquer my inaccurate conviction that others are the cause of my anger, my fight comes closer and closer to pure anger itself, i.e., to myself. If anger is an addiction, a harmful habit that provides enough short lived feelings of power and relief from a sense of insignificance, then it(I) will struggle all the more violently the more successfully I control it. As I zero in on the source, myself, anger strikes more savagely and more quickly, more desperately. Anger distracts me by imagining threats to an imaginary mineness, or possessiveness, of the close world of my privacy, home, and family. The last refuge for the will.
This suggests two delusions: First, that there is any spot where the will operates freely (alas, that there is any definable will wanting expression that is not the result of compounding the various other forces in the world); and two, that my family, my space, is mine to control (alas, that my family, my space, is something different from the world.
This all sounds very dire. But that too is a distraction, because the news is good. I have anger cornered.
It is somewhat of a mystery. I have had theories, of course, such as the following examples. One is most vulnerable and trusting at home; insults wound more deeply. There is more at stake with our loved ones; I guard the margins of the relationship to prevent smaller issues becoming larger ones. The relationship with a spouse or other loved one is more secure, more capable of suffering the rough buffets of anger; my less secure relationships might dissolve permanently if I show my anger. I, like many others perhaps, have a volatility to my personality that needs a safe outlet; it is my role as a spouse, and likewise my spouses role, to absorb the anger of our loved other and provide a safe outlet with forgiveness.
Perhaps these theories have some truth to them. But today, in thinking of anger more generally (and re- reading Robert Thurman's Anger), I wonder if as I struggle successfully against the feelings of anger, as I slowly conquer my inaccurate conviction that others are the cause of my anger, my fight comes closer and closer to pure anger itself, i.e., to myself. If anger is an addiction, a harmful habit that provides enough short lived feelings of power and relief from a sense of insignificance, then it(I) will struggle all the more violently the more successfully I control it. As I zero in on the source, myself, anger strikes more savagely and more quickly, more desperately. Anger distracts me by imagining threats to an imaginary mineness, or possessiveness, of the close world of my privacy, home, and family. The last refuge for the will.
This suggests two delusions: First, that there is any spot where the will operates freely (alas, that there is any definable will wanting expression that is not the result of compounding the various other forces in the world); and two, that my family, my space, is mine to control (alas, that my family, my space, is something different from the world.
This all sounds very dire. But that too is a distraction, because the news is good. I have anger cornered.
posted by Michael at
6:58 AM
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