Anger Management

329 Marbles 
Anger always comes from frustrated expectations.
Elliott Larson

    Dear Reader, there are many things that I’m not proud of doing in my past, and I’d like those moments to quietly slink into the shadows, but if you are going to know me at my brightest, insightful moments, you may as well know me at my darkest moments, so here goes…I used to get so angry when Ex-man withdrew (abandonment was a big trigger for me).  One night as he was making an escape in his car, I took the bottle of Cristal champagne that we were keeping for a special occasion and threw it out the door after him (not at him).  The bottle did some amazing flips on the lawn, jumping over the sidewalk until it landed, remarkably unharmed, on the boulevard.  This got his attention.  We both looked at the bottle and looked at each other.  The bottle may have been indestructible but our relationship, not surprisingly, was not.
    The good news is that in my relationship with Ex-man, I learned to control my anger and we worked through the dramatic stage characterized by events such as the above.  My father used to tease me, “You came into the world with your fists up,” and indeed, my baby picture shows me as a little boxer.  This fighter quality has been great at times as I tend to never roll over and admit defeat, but it was challenging in relationship with Ex-man.  Situations like the above made me realize that I needed anger management and I learned about the anger mountain: how anger tends to escalate on an incline until it hits an apex and a blowout.  I’ve learned how when I’m tired or stressed, my fiery-self starts higher up the mountain so it’s easier to reach that apex.  I learned not to throw things or shake Ex-man to get his attention when he withdrew.  I reluctantly allowed him his cave and learned that it wasn’t always about me.  My behavior changed but he kept withdrawing.  The Roman author, Publilius Syrus, wrote, “You should make a woman angry if you wish her to love.”  In Syrus’ books, we played our cards right.
    Larson wrote that frustrated expectations are at the root of anger and this makes sense to me with Ex-man; I used to expect him to be present with me and when he couldn’t or wouldn’t, I would get angry.   But in hindsight, maybe it was less about what he was doing and more about the expectation I had about what I thought he should be doing.  Withdrawal was his MO; abandonment was my trigger: two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together for the work of healing.  Yikes!
    I still have anger towards Ex-man for the ultimate withdrawal of the breakup, but if I examine it, what seeps through the cracks is immense sadness: sadness of failure, sadness that two good people could have been such jerks to each other at times, sadness of lost promise and possibility, and sadness for my children.  Most of all I’m sad that my friend and the first person I ever fell in love with is gone.  Sometimes I’m so sad that it makes me feel mad. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”  What would it take to apply these words post breakup?.