Dear Michele:

A couple of ways to go about it:

1) Minimize anxiety in your life individually and in your communications with him: the less anxiety he experiences, the less anger. You wrote: “… the new position within 2 weeks….will allow me to stop stressing about immediate finances”- if you expressed to him a lot of your immediate financial worries, then you unnecessarily increased his anxiety. It is important for you (and for him) to discipline the expression of your own worries and fears. Do express those, but not going on and on about them, not with undisciplined expressions such as in crying at length.

2) His hating his own expression of anger suggests to me that he is motivated to change it.

Suggest to him that “when your anger goes up, your IQ goes down.”

As to skills of communicating without accusing and abusing: form a ground rule for your communication: to always be respectful of each other, no matter how either one of you feels. I like the EAR concept for communication, standing for Empathy, Assertiveness, Respect. The more assertive he is, the less passive and/ or aggressive he will be. Assertiveness is a skill that can be learned, improved and mastered. Respect requires skills and the ability and willingness to endure anxiety/ distress without automatically reacting ineffectively, as in the going on and on about one’s worries (in #1) or in accusing and fighting.

anita