How to Deal with Anger

Published January 22, 1981. When was the last time you were angry at your husband or wife? Does it happen often in your marriage? What do you do or say when you become angry? Dr. David and Vera Mace of Winston-Salem, North Carolina have some suggestions.

In their book, “How to Have a Happy Marriage,” the Maces devote one whole chapter to dealing with anger. Some of their thoughts are worth considering.

The Maces believe that anger is an involuntary, powerful feeling that takes hold of us when we are physically threatened or frustrated. Since modern man is infrequently threatened for his day-to-day physical survival, much of his contemporary anger arises through frustration, particularly from unmet expectations in life.

“In marriage,” the Maces claim, “we often find ourselves in situations where expectations are high, and frustrations can often occur. We would venture the opinion that for normal people, being married probably generates more anger than any other interpersonal situation in which they usually find themselves.”

How should a married couple deal with anger? First, the Maces advise, recognize that anger is a normal emotion which often develops spontaneously as a response to a stimulus outside the individual. “A person who doesn’t get angry,” they state, “is not a normal human being.”

Although we often have a difficult time not becoming angry, the Maces claim we are responsible for what we do about it. “People who say they have and ‘uncontrollable’ temper are deceiving themselves. They allow themselves to stomp and rage because at some time in their past, temper tantrums enable them to get what they wanted.”

Another common misunderstanding about anger is that by ending it, we get rid of it. According to the Maces, the opposite is true. “Venting anger sends a message to the body to continue its responses. Recent studies have shown that individuals who vent their anger tend, over time, to produce more and more anger. Venting anger vigorously usually resorts to physical violence.”

And venting anger, they note, almost invariably gets your marriage partner angry too. Then you require more and more anger to continue to fight.

In their book, David and Vera Mace suggest a three-step program to constructively deal with anger in marriage.

Step one: Agree to acknowledge your anger to each other as soon as you become aware of it. Acknowledging anger is not venting anger; it simply communicates to your partner the state of your emotions without accusation or blame.

Step two: Renounce together the right to vent anger on each other. “Anger,” they state, “is too damaging to a love relationship. “There are better ways to deal with anger then venting it. Simply talking things through is often a cathartic [or cleansing] experience.

Step three: Ask your spouse to help you deal with your anger. Appeal to him or her to help clear it up.

The Maces conclude, “Only when you have brought anger completely under control in your marriage – and we mean by accepting and resolving it together, not suppressing it – does the way lay clear and open to a continuing growth in love and intimacy.”

We will be angry at times, but we should learn to control what we do about it. We should deal with our anger immediately, before it becomes a destructive force. And that is exactly what the Apostle Paul taught nearly two thousand years ago in the Bible: “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:  Neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4 26-27).