Anger of others

[mgb2020]

I’m struggling to cope when my partner gets angry. He is never abusive towards me, it is just the fact of being in his presence when he becomes angry and has a verbally abusive outburst when he is stressed ie if a car merges lanes in front of him and they’re going slower than he prefers he calls them a series of colourful profanities and aggressively changes lanes.

For me, behaviour like this is frightening for reasons I should probably explore further. But in that moment I feel my anxiety shoot up and it takes a long time to come down from that.

But for him, he then acts like it never happened, doesn’t seem to consider how that makes me feel, wonders why I’m “being weird” and when I say something I’m made to feel like I’m unsupportive of him or that I should just accept it and case closed.

When I try to explain myself it’s met with him getting more upset with me... for feeling anxious about his anger outburst.

He is unapologetic about his behaviour and hates it when I ask him not to swear. But this is what I need. On the same hand, he seems to feel that swearing his lungs out hurling abuses (intended for others but not saying it directly to them) is the only way to express himself and so I should just be okay with it and sit there in my own anxiety. That moment is hard, especially when it’s the one person in your life that you’d hope will help create a calm environment for you.

Idk. Anyone else have a similar thing?

Sometimes I think I’m just sensitive and being precious 😔

How do you practice self care when it’s someone else’s anger that’s causing the anxiety?

[Poodie]

Hi mgb2020.

I think I can understand how you might feel. I used to get upset by my husband getting angry. Sometimes I would tend to think he was angry at me when he was just angry at random circumstances. If I said something his reply was usually, Can’t you just let me be angry? I thought to myself, Well that does seem like something I should be able to do.

I have explained to him that another person’s mood definitely has an effect on the other people they live with and he has a responsibility not to go around inflicting his bad mood on others. It is hard to ignore an angry frustrated person, so i asked if he could be less loud so I could ignore it better.

I sometimes told him it seemed attention getting to me and if there is something he needs from me to just ask.

He will misplace his glasses and go grumbling around getting mad at himself.

He is frustrated but then says he does not want me to help him find them.

We have talked about such things off and on for quite a while now. It has gotten better. It seems best if I hear him get angry in another part of the house for me to just ignore it, instead of reacting as if something terrible has happened. I think not reacting to it helps. And it used to make me quite anxious because I grew up with lots of parental anger hurled around.

Sometimes it happens over a sports game. He yells at players and

sometimes storms out of the room. That even bothered me, but I just let him be.

Now if your partner aggressively changes lanes and that makes you feel unsafe in the car, I would express that to him. But he may be in total control of the car ? I had a tendency to be overly anxious in a car, but mine is basically careful.

I guess it depends on how much of a problem it is for you. We have been married for a long time. We are occasionally still working on how to communicate better. It really is up to each of us to behave rationally. He does listen. He does care. I am not perfect. He is not an abusive, controlling, narcissistic person, however I think there is some element of control that is part of this behavior.

So I am not sure that helps you. I guess I basically decided I as an adult could control my own reaction and put it in context. I was overreacting to current situations. It is definitely not akin to parents arguing, banging things around, threatening and grabbing knives !

Anyway, hope that helps. And it never hurts to read up on control and abuse if you are uncertain.

Good luck.

[mrmonk]

I would be more concerned that a person's excessive anger could dramatically raise blood pressure, leading to heart attack, stroke, aneurysm.

[Poodie in reply to mrmonk]

Yes, I do worry about that.

[Pastelpurple]

No i completely understand how this feels, don’t know if this is the best advice but perhaps he feels a bit a power over you, because he knows you’ll react in a sincere calm yet upset manner, which is not okay you deserve better but if u decide to stay sometimes acting like u don’t care Nd bossing up will show them that they really don’t have that power over them. I stopped reacting to my boyfriends “tantrums” because I realized all he wanted was reaction and now he’s the one asking if I’m okay and trying to change.