Dear Feathering:

This is what you wrote about your anger and which makes sense to  me (quotes in this post are not necessarily in chronological order): “this deep anger and fear is probably what is keeping  me isolated… several ex boyfriends have told  me I am an angry person. It must  bleed out of my pores without  my noticing”.

I think you are aware of your anger but unaware of the extent  of  it, meaning you are angrier that you believe that you are. You wrote about your anger that it  is “a subtle soft and subversive anger that unwittingly keeps people at bay”. I don’t think it  is subtle at all. You view yourself as patient and kind when anger, not patience and kindness, is the  dominant emotion and  characteristic of your relationships with others. (“I am patient, willing to do the  give and take, willing to communicate… now he tells me my ‘friendship wasn’t very friendly’- which isn’t  true, I was  always  kind to him”).

You wrote: “I wonder if this deep undercurrent of anger we discussed  is creating a hostile environment- that makes communication between my lovers and I very difficult. Several remarked that I have a lot of anger”- you are aware and not aware. You are  not aware of the extent of your anger, minimizing it. Ex boyfriends told you about it but you ..don’t quite believe them.

When you first met the  current man, you quickly “judged  him too harshly”- there is the anger, right at the beginning. Then came the arguments where you refer to him as if you were a police interrogator of a criminal suspect: “He shifted between denying.. and then later admitting it… By his own admission… He admits to being afraid”.

I looked for the origin of your anger and found something when you were  five: “When I was 5… we moved to  Wales… we left  our cat with him. My mother refused to allow me to keep in contact with him and had a whole host  of excuses as to  why we  could not take our pet cat”. So you were angry at your mother at about five.

You wrote about your father: “My father is a critical man and unaware of how intense his anger is”- like you then,  he too is unaware of how intense his anger is.

Because of this anger  you prefer to do the following: “to make  friends with strangers, with whom I’d befriend for the day and not speak with again”- you intended  the relationship with the current  man to be short term as well, from the beginning. You want love but you are  angry, so you can take.. a bit of love short term only.

You are intensely angry at others, so much so t hat you lack empathy: “I struggled to put myself fully in the shoes  of others and often had arguments that I struggled to reconcile”.

Back to the origin of your anger: “I then consistently feel unloved and unappreciated. And as soon as those feelings kick in it triggers a cycle of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are extremely difficult to stop”.

I believe that you were “unloved and unappreciated” as a child on an ongoing basis, that you reached  out to your  mother and/ or your father repeatedly for their love and did not receive it again and again and again. That was the origin of  your anger.

You wrote about this suggestion that I already made to you: “As humans, they are not perfect”- you let my suggestion that you weren’t loved as a child slide  off you with that comment and other convenient type of thinking. Yes, they were not perfect and they didn’t love you, would be the realistic thought,  I believe.

Of course they fed you, sheltered you, were nice to you sometimes, but for many hours, days, months, years, most of the time, they did not love you, that is, they rejected your efforts to get their love, and those rejections hurt you intensely and infuriated you.

If you address, acknowledge, and process those feelings of anger toward your parents, one of them, or the two, you will no longer feel anger at everyone else. Your anger will become person-specific and freed from inserting itself to each and every relationship in your adult life.

In this coming meeting with the current man, I hope that you will be honest with him about how you feel, including  about your anger, let him know that it doesn’t mean that you are responsible for all the troubles  in the relationship that took place with him, but it is very significant. Do your best to not argue with him.

When you feel the beginning of anger following something he said (or didn’t say), ask him a question about what he meant  by this or that. Look for his reason to replace the possibly and likely incorrect assumption you made about what he meant.

When you feel overwhelmed, control yourself,  no knee jerk reactions in words or acts. Take deep breaths. When you feel that he just offended to you but are not  absolutely sure, say to yourself: I will think about this later, not now and change the subject, or just have some quiet time. Then think about it not  in his presence. Share it here if you want my input.

anita