Managing Anger in Your Relationship

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Anger is a poison in our relationship when it is misunderstood and unleashed. It gets in the way of understanding, connectedness, love, and satisfaction in our relationship. Anger in its explosive or simmering manifestation, is a sign that something is wrong when it is prevalent. This indicates that there is pain and dysfunction in the relationship and that something needs to change.

I do not consider Anger a real emotion. I look at Anger as more of a temporary (or more permanent for some) state of being. The angry state is a reaction that covers more sensitive feelings. It is a protection for our vulnerability. When we feel angry, we actually have other more vulnerability inducing feelings underneath such as feeling hurt, insignificant, dismissed, lonely, hopeless, invisible, smothered and abandoned.

To deal with the anger in our relationship, we first need to start noticing the anger coming on before we act angry – whether it is withdrawing or yelling and throwing stuff around. Some tale signs that we are about to act angry are getting a knot in the stomach, sweating, feeling our heart beat faster, and getting flushed. Start paying attention to how the anger feels in your body.
Once you are aware that you are feeling angry and are about to start acting out your anger, you can take a second to identify what are the sensitive feelings underneath the anger. It is a bit difficult for some to identify their more vulnerability inducing feelings. 

Choose the sensitive feelings that are related to your anger, don’t get stuck at the superficial level and identifying other reactionary feelings (i.e., frustration, exasperation, rage, etc.). If you allow yourself to go deeper, you will be surprised to discover more tender feelings.
Now that you know what you are really feeling, you need to identify what triggered those feelings. This is where your partner plays their role. Partners are a good source of triggers. They just have it in them to get under our skin.

In our interactions with our partner, we perceive the situation, we interpret such situation and we think on it. This is what creates the anger and the other deeper feelings. The reason for this is that thoughts create emotions. Think about this. How you think about something creates how you feel about it.
When you perceive your partner as selfish, self-involved, non-caring, or like they don’t care or are taking advantage of you or your situation, you are going to feel angry and upon further exploration you’ll realize that you are actually feeling unimportant, abandoned, abused, stepped on, etc.

Being able to recognize how you are thinking about something and identify the related sensitive feelings is huge. This gives you good positioning for healing and creating changes in your relationship. One way to accomplish this is that in knowing how you are looking at something you can choose to look at it from a different perspective, which leads to feeling differently. Another way is that by having identified sensitive feelings you can interpret your needs and work on getting them met. 

This concept works wonders when addressing anger management, AND other issues, in relationships as both partners can benefit from better understanding their feelings and triggers. This creates a fertile ground for making changes and getting needs met.
Say goodbye to the anger and start having your needs met and enjoying the relationship you crave!!

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Learn to Forgive Yourself and Be Happier

If we truly want to live a happier life, we must dig deep and learn to forgive. Forgiveness is the most precious treasure that we can give ourselves and each other.
When we are willing to take responsibility for forgiveness, we are guaranteed a life of peace, gratitude, wisdom, expansion and growth.
If not, we are destined to a life of blame, resentment, pain, self pity, guilt and anger.

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To be truly happy, forgiveness begins with our self first. Each time we beat ourselves up for the past, for mistakes or bad choices that we have made, we stay trapped in a shell of toxic shame and self–abuse.
Somehow we think that we deserve this. Maybe we were told that we were bad as a child by a parent or a teacher and part of us believes this. We believe that punishing ourselves will make us a better person or a more humble person.
But this lie will never make us a better person. It will only keep us prisoner to the shame that we continue to carry. Whether in the privacy of our own minds or out loud for all to hear, each time that we criticize ourselves for our own faults and mistakes, we are participating in our own self-abuse. We are telling ourselves that we are bad. We, in fact, become our worst enemies.
If what we desire is a love filled life, we must learn to love ourselves first. That can only happen with forgiveness.

“Although forgiveness often looks like a generous gift we are giving to someone else, it is ultimately an act of self-love and a gift we give to ourselves.”

Our resentments hold onto us like a ball and chain, keeping us prisoner to our anger and to the person that we are so angry toward. We think that we will show them by continuing to make them suffer. But we are the ones who are truly suffering!
We continue to try and prove that we are right and ‘they’ are wrong.
Our righteous attitude keeps us locked up in our own misery.
We find a sick kind of comfort in this.
Our freedom begins with taking full responsibility for our part and…
… letting go of blaming others.
The power of forgiveness does not require that we agree with, condone or tolerate abuse or bad behavior. We forgive the sinner, not the sin.
By forgiving, we set ourselves free to create and receive so much more.
By forgiving others, we do not become doormats for them to wipe their feet upon. It is important that we create and set strong boundaries for those who would continue to try to take advantage of us.
True forgiveness allows us to stop being victims and helps us to step into our power and authority so that we will not make the same mistakes again.

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Do You Know How To Apologise After a Disagreement?

There Are Four Steps. Are You Doing All Of Them?

Are you and your partner having a tough time getting over an argument? Here are some tips to help.

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 1. Surrender to your responsibility.
When you become aware that you have made a mistake, admit it and apologize. Use it as an opportunity to learn and grow. You don’t have to be afraid of punishment or rejection –- apologizing makes it easier to be forgiven.

2. Don’t be afraid to admit you're wrong.
This fear comes from a culture of blaming and accusing -- where your early family or schoolmates may have picked a "culprit" when something went wrong, and focused on blame, rather than on fixing the problem and healing the hurt. Don’t approach every situation as if you're on trial, and don’t compulsively try to convince everyone you're not guilty. Apology and subsequent forgiveness is stress-releasing, and healthy for the relationship, which turns out to be healthy for the participants in the relationship. Relationships which include healthy apology and forgiveness are less stressful, more supportive, and therefore healthier for the individuals within them. 

3. Follow the following pattern for apology:
Admit your mistake: Speak directly to the person to whom you need to apologize.
State what you did (so the person knows you’re aware)
Say you’re sorry
Do a re-take: Describe what change you’ll make to fix it, and so it won’t happen again
Say “I hope you can forgive me.”

4. If that doesn’t work, ask the other person what he or she wants you to apologize for (in case you misunderstood your mistake).

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If You Want Your Relationship to Flourish - Keep Jesus As The Cornerstone

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Making any Christian relationship work is more difficult than getting into one. It requires a considerable amount of effort for both the companions. It’s more like a roller coaster ride where a brief part is smooth, while the rest is exciting and thrilling, but there’s always a small part that’s scary and bumpy. In situations where the problem gets aggravated, you must try to sort out the matter yourselves, or, if required, seek out reliable Christian relationship advice.

Listed below are a few pointers offering Christian relationship advice which might benefit Christian couples:

1.     Jesus should be your First Priority

Relationships where Jesus is given priority tend to flourish, while those which don’t tend to fail. It is common for people to prioritize Jesus when they are single; however, as soon as they get into a relationship, the top place goes to the new found love. What you need to understand is that Jesus is not your relationship backup plan which is given priority until someone better comes along. If you want your relationship to flourish, you need to build it with Jesus as the cornerstone.

2.     Don’t justify an abusive relationship

It is very common for people to rationalize abusive relationships by using phrases like:

• “Well, she’s not like that all the time.”
• “It’s no big deal. That’s just the way our relationship is.”
• “It isn’t really that bad.”

This is more common among women, however, in certain relationships, men also put up with such problems. There are many relationships where the girlfriend is emotionally manipulative and controlling or where the boyfriend is physically abusive. Instead of confronting these problems in order to remedy them, people seek to justify them out of fear of being alone. This is why people go to extreme lengths to deny the existence of abusive behaviour in their relationships.

No relationship is perfect – each has its problems and issues. However, there is fine line between a challenging relationship and one which is destructive. When a relationship starts getting abusive, that line is crossed. As a result, one should understand when to work on the relationship and when to stop.

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