There’s a lot of focus these days on helping angry men. My recent article How to Love an Angry Man has been widely read and my upcoming Anger Class is getting a lot of interest (Drop me an email and put “anger class” in the subject line and I’ll send you more information.) My book, The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression has become an international best-seller.
Yet, we all know women whose anger is harming themselves and undermining their relationships. I know. I was married to one. We met in the pools at Harbin Hot Springs and the relationship was hot and heavy right from the beginning. I should have been warned off when she told me about her recent time in Mexico where she had gone on vacation with her previous boyfriend.
They had been coming back from partying late at night and were walking back to their hotel. The streets were wet and a truck drove by and splashed them. She became enraged at the young man driving the truck and his buddies who were riding in the truck bed. She screamed obscenities and gave them the finger. The truck swung around and barreled toward them. Her boyfriend jumped out of the way, but she was hit by the truck. She spent two months in a Mexican hospital recovering from the accident.
She was still furious three months after returning from Mexico and took no responsibility for provoking the attack. My conscious mind said, “Get away from this woman. She’s dangerous.” My subconscious mind, the mind that was attracted to danger and excitement said, “Hmm. This could be interesting.”
We dated for a few months and the time together left me exhilarated and exhausted. I wanted to leave, but I also wanted more. Anyone who has been in a relationship like this knows the addictive draw that some of us have to danger and excitement.
We got married despite most of my friend’s warnings. I thought they just couldn’t see her wonderful side. And there was a wonderful side. She was intelligent, adventurous, inventive, and very, very sexy. I had my own anger issues and there was a quality of a moth attracted to the flame. Many of us who grew up in dysfunctional families confuse love with addiction and excitement with risk-taking.
But there was also a dark and dangerous side to her. When she got angry, she could be mean. After one fight she let out all the air in my tires. Another time, she threw my eye classes out of the car window. She would often threaten me if I didn’t do what she wanted. The fights were continuous and increasingly ugly and the make up sex never was worth the pain of our interactions.
I tried to be the calm, rational, partner. I tried fighting back and standing up to her abuse. I tried to convince her go get into therapy. I thought we needed couples counseling, but she was resistant.
No single event seemed like a big enough deal to end the relationship, but our time together was like a thousand bloody cuts. Gradually, it seemed like my will to fight back drained out of me. I felt like a prisoner, but I couldn’t find the strength to leave. I was ashamed to tell my friends that they were right.
As a counselor, I was experienced telling abused women that they had to “get out before something worse happens.” I couldn’t understand when the women agreed with me, but wouldn’t leave. “But I love him,” they would say. “He’ll change. I know he will.” I couldn’t believe I was in a relationship where I was being abused, but I couldn’t summon the strength to leave.
Things would always get better for a while. We’d get busy with work. We’d spend time with friends. We’d fight less and enjoy more. But something would always set her off. I learned that she had been raised in a chaotic family. Her mother was cold and rejecting. She was very close to her father until she entered puberty and then he totally withdrew from her.
I began to see that the wounds from her past created a woman who was hungry for love, but angry at men. No matter what I did, I seemed to trigger her rage. For the longest time, I thought it was me. Maybe I just needed to be a better man, a more caring partner. But it became increasingly clear that the only way out was for her to deal with her childhood wounds, what we know call ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences).
But she was unwilling to do so. Many wounded people are terrified of facing their past. They take out their pain on others and on themselves. Not all angry women are as wounded as my wife, but all need help and support. Man aren’t the only ones whose anger can become destructive.
We were married three years and most of the time was like riding a crazy roller-coaster of ecstatic highs and soul-crushing lows. The last straw came following one of our many fights. We had learned to “take a time out” when our anger escalated and we’d go into our separate bedrooms. We were like prize-fighters going to a neutral corner after a knockdown.
I went into my room and closed the door and tried to calm myself. All of a sudden, my door burst open and she had “a few more things I’ve got to say to you.”
“Get the fuck out…NOW,” I screamed. I felt my face getting red and my anger frightened me.
She turned and walked out the door and I breathed a sigh of relief.
But then she turned back and got right in my face and started punching me in the chest.
I lost all control. I knew I was going to hit her and if I did, I knew I would kill her. All my anger, all the rage I had been trying to control, exploded to the surface. I pulled my fist back and could see it crushing her face.
Instead, at the last second, I turned and punched the wall. I pictured my hand going through the plaster and out the other side. Instead, I hit a stud and crushed my hand. She drove me to the emergency room and I required immediate surgery to fix the broken bones.
If I had hit her, I would have spent the rest of my life in prison. Even a slap in the face would have landed me in jail.
Most everyone has had some experience with angry men and women who are the recipients of their violence. Many of us have had experiences with angry women, but mostly we keep quiet about it. Men are not supposed to be intimidated by women or to fight back when we are pushed past our limit. We rarely talk about angry women these days.
Looking back, I wish she would have gotten help for her anger. I wish I had been stronger, left sooner, or gotten help myself, whether she was willing or not.
What’s been your experience? Have you been in love with an angry woman? Have you been a woman whose out-of-control anger has been harmful? Let me hear from you. Drop me a note or if you want to learn more about the “anger class,” email me.
Yeah, I met too many angry, and out of control women at work and the worst ones were Afro-American women. Don’t believe me? Here is a something from youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJ9LcnEASk.
One of the most thoughtful discussions on the topic of female anger I have ever heard. The speaker hits the nail right on the head. Angry people don’t like themselves and project their anger on to everyone they come in contact with. Thank you for the youtube.
You are welcome
I think the video on abuse Black women has important things to say. I disagree with her that this is generally true of Black women, but certainly it speaks to a sub-set of Black females can has important things to say about abusive White women, and abusive men of all races.
Jed
Excellent article, in a way it is triggering, many similarities. I think deep codependency occurs, it prevents any healing even when both of us are “punched” out. Attachment and familiarity inhibits any recovery. That feeling of being run by another’s emotions was so powerful to me, the anxiety I felt just listening to her footsteps in the house, filled with confusion and Powerlessness. Stepping back and stopping my participation was so hard. I truly love her but have never been able to heal myself and the relationship. When I stopped fighting and entered 12 steps it stopped, she hired and attorney and left. There have been momentary fire fights, text fighting is so much safer but still as sick. Focusing on my own self and refusing to engage in anything that resembles combat and doing the work of my anonymous program has been healing, but the past 23 years of love, hate, addiction, family, war, peace, and everything else that makes a life is very difficult to transform. For now it comes down to myself, regardless of how angry my wife may be at me for my choice of stopping I knew I could not continue and I knew I was sick. Only I can heal me, I was never going to heal engaged in our mutually assured destruction. The thing is that no matter how much you might want intimacy it is impossible when the threat of attack is eminent, and as long as I was engaged in MY addiction and our mutual codependency ruled combat was all we had. Denial and coming out of denial of exactly how I (we) were actually living is another conversation. Anger from women or man if ongoing and always unresolved is no way to live and love can’t live in between no matter how hard we might try.
Bill,
Well said. Thanks for the comments.