So what can you do when you're angry (a.k.a. feeling hurt and vulnerable) to express your honest emotions but not be a total ass in the process? Here are five steps to try:
1. Accept Your Biology
Research has proven that humans are hardwired to emotionally bond with another. When anything threatens that connection, you experience undeniable inner turmoil. So, recognize that your reaction to feel panicked and threatened is normal. That doesn't mean it's OK to lash out just because you feel that way, but at the same time no one graduates to a completely reaction-free life. You're just not built that way...biologically speaking.
2. Take a Step Back
Perspective is a powerful antidote to emotional drama. So, become the observer and witness your own emotional process. As the drama unfolds, step off the stage of your life and take a seat in the audience. Witness the scene you're a part of in its entirety.
Feel your own moment-to-moment experience AND seek to understand the point of view of the other actor in the scene (a.k.a. your partner). Notice that you're stuck in a negative cycle that you both create together; a cycle of hurt and reaction that you pass back and forth like a game of hot potato.
What you really want is connection (to be heard, seen, loved). And this need is important enough to you that when it's not met, you experience vulnerability, even if you're not conscious of it. When you witness yourself reacting, open up to the possibility that your partner's behavior is simply a catalyst for you to get in touch with your own vulnerability.
4. Own Your Bad Behavior
You're pissed off and behaving like an asshole. You thought "the problem" was your partner, but now you realize it's the pain you feel because you’re not feeling loved in the ways you long for. A sensitive spot inside you got bumped up against and you can’t continue to keep it unfelt and unseen. That's OK. That's valid.
Even worse, when you try to stop the pain and protect yourself (by protesting or withdrawing), this rubs your partner’s sensitive spots, wounding them and causing them to react. Damn. Can you see how you’re contributing to your own pain and vulnerability being triggered?
5. Turn Toward Your Partner
In this moment of hurt, you may worry your partner won't be there for you in the ways you need, and you may even feel you don't deserve their love and support when you're this vulnerable. It can feel terrifying (and trigger you to feel pissed off all over again).
But what if you could feel the full vulnerability and turn towards it when you would normally turn away? Could you share this moment of vulnerability with your partner? Also, IS it possible to be a loving and supportive presence for your partner when they turn towards you with their own vulnerability? Doing so takes so much more courage than blaming, criticizing, withdrawing, or shutting down. Likewise, take the risk, lower your defenses, and give your partner a chance to be there for you.
Don't be surprised if you find this ridonkulously difficult while it's happening.
Once you stop hiding behind a lifetime of reactive strategies, it's gonna feel uncomfortable. Just remember you're moving toward love and connection with your partner.
It took me some time, but, in my own marriage, I learned how to identify what I am really reacting to when I'm angry and acting like a jerk. And it's not a failure on my wife's part to meet my needs. No. I'm reacting to feeling alone in the world in some way. That deep-down sense of aloneness that lives inside me is too painful for me to sit in sometimes, and it was there long before I met my wife.
I came to understand that it is in those moments that I need my wife the most, that I long to be held within the embrace of our love and support for each other. How sad for me (and for both of us) that this is also when I'm most prone to act like an ass.
Speaking of your partner, please know that it takes both of you to make things better.
You can't do all of this alone. As I tell my clients, when you both recognize you're in a negative cycle that you create together (not my cycle and your cycle, but OUR cycle), and that you fight because your connection is important to each other, you can move forward to a better relationship.
Even an asshole like me can turn things around.
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