Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Anger Personalities

A rather random thought, how do you get when you get angry? Do you yell and scream, do you go cold and silent, do you break things or burst into tears and just cry? When I get really angry I will get vocal about it, but for the most part I want to talk about it, I want to say what made me mad and hear what you have to say about it. On the opposite side my partner Mr H wants to be left alone, he does not want to talk or to interact he just wants to fume about the issue and then possibly calm down. Now any anger style is fine and we are lucky that neither of us are prone to breaking things or major outbursts in public places. Basically I want to talk, at first loudly (when I am still in the heat of the moment) then more softly, then I cry. That is the general way a major argument goes for me. For Mr H on the other hand, he will express real pure anger, but it is much colder, and then he goes silent he does not want to talk he wants to be left alone and when he does talk (if he is still angry) then he gets vocal about the argument. The downside? We have opposite anger personalities. This is hard as I want to talk and he wants to be left alone. We usually solve this by both of us sucking it up some, I leave him alone for a while and he talks to me sooner. Now really this is only a problem when we are both mad at each other, if I am mad at him, he knows I want to talk about it and if he is mad at me I leave him well enough alone! Really I guess it goes to show that even when we are fighting we are sill compromising!
So what about you? What is your anger style? Are you a discussion like me, a silent one like Mr H, a Tantrum, or a smasher? Let me know, and if you'd like, tell me about your anger personality compared to your partner, how do you work it out?

1 comment:

  1. Anger is a hard issue to deal with. Everyone is wounded in some way by their upbringing and we all experience anger differently. And we're of course attracted to hour opposites in our partners, usually. I'm often attracted to men who shut down like your hubby and what helped me a lot was to say,"o.k. I understand you don't want to discuss it now, but I need to know that this issue and our relationship is important, so can you tell me when we can discuss this, even if it's tomorrow, but I do need to hear that this is important to you as well."then I usually write a letter to my partner just venting, which I never give, unless I feel it's going to help the relationship, just so I don't hold all the frustration and anger inside of me. It's important to know that anger is not unhealthy and couples counseling can also help a lot, to better communicate with the other.

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