Dear Jenny:

“I’m sorry but with all due respect, I don’t agree Anita… I am sorry Anita if any of this sounds rude… it is just something I felt and thought I could say it to you. But feel free to say what you feel. If I am missing something, I’d like to see that. I’d await your reply”-

– No need to apologize for disagreeing with me: disagreeing is part of an honest communication, because no two people agree (or should agree) at all times, and because disagreement can lead to re-evaluating one’s understanding and improving it.

I want to point to three things that are very relevant to the topic of your anger before I proceed with this long post:

(1) You have always been respectful and gracious in your communication with me. I appreciate it very much.

(2) Everyone feels anger, no one with a functioning brain can possibly be anger-free. Anger is a natural, inborn emotion, and it often follows hurt. It is not humanely possible that you did not feel angry with your mother when she shouted at you and insulted you.

(3) When a person feels angry, the emotion of anger automatically expresses itself in the angry person’s face, body and voice: the facial muscles tighten, the person’s breathing becomes faster, the person stands taller, looking bigger and stronger, and the voice becomes louder.

People, as well as other animals, when confronted by an aggressor, are motivated to either Fight the aggressor, run away from the aggressor (the Flight response), or if they can’t run away, they play dead, hoping the aggressor will think they are dead and leave them alone (the Freeze response). If the aggressor is bigger and stronger then the person being confronted, the person confronted will not fight because fighting against one who is bigger and stronger is likely to end with defeat, which in nature means injury and death.

And now, for the rest of this long post. Please take all the time that you need to read and re-read the above and the following, so to have the opportunity to thoughtfully consider what I am putting together here for you.

You opened your recent, Feb 3 reply stating that you respectfully disagree with me. Here is what you disagree with (the italicized): “I talked back with my mother, but.. I didn’t start ever. I was never the child called out for being rude, arrogant or disrespectful to her parents on her own accord”-

– I did not suggest to you that you started arguments with your mother, or that you were a rude, arrogant, and a disrespectful child to your mother, or to your father. It is very, very… very unlikely for a small and weaker person- a child, to start aggression against a big and strong parent: it defies nature.

What I wrote to you at the end of my Feb 2 post was: “I have no doubt that your long-term anger as a child was valid: that any child in your place would have gotten repeatedly angry”- I understood that you were angry at your mother, and that your anger was valid, meaning that she did something wrong  to you, repeatedly, and her wrong actions against you led to you becoming an (excessively) angry child.

* As I continue, I will re-examine my earlier conclusion that you indeed felt excessively angry as a child and as an adult.

You continued your Feb 3 post with: “my mom scolded me… she said personal hurtful things… she shouted at me…”- well, these are some of the wrong things she did to you, which caused your valid anger at her.

Your valid anger at your mother was expressed in these ways: “I would talk back… my voice would be loud and my words rude to match that of mom’s”.

Because of your recent post, I better understand the context of your mother telling you that no one will take your nature/ anger: your mother was rude to you but when you matched her rudeness, she demanded sole ownership  of rudeness. In her mind, it was okay for her to (1) be rude to you, and (2) to demand that you react respectfully to her rudeness (saying, “who talks back to their mother, look at so and so, they are so respectful”).

“I  know maybe I shouldn’t have talked back,  maybe I could stay quiet and respect her more. So I wasn’t submissive”- I disagree: no person should respect rudeness. No person should take rudeness quietly and submissively. But a small child has no choice but to stay quiet, so to not provoke the bigger/ stronger aggressor and suffer even more aggression.

Regarding one of your cousins who “takes her husband’s behaviour”, your mother says today: “why doesn’t she talk  back”- if your cousin’s mother was rude to your cousin when your cousin was a child, and demanded that your cousin submits to her rudeness, then your cousin’s mother trained your cousin to submit to rudeness. So, as to your mother’s question: why doesn’t she talk back?, I answer: because her mother (and/ or father) trained her to not talk back to an aggressor.

“I know that I couldn’t.. clean the toilet only to hear my husband shout at me.. and stay quiet”- good thing, Jenny. I never recommended that you take abuse quietly.  It is your mother who demanded that you take her abuse quietly, making you feel guilty if you objected to it in any way.

You wrote regarding your mother in recent times, you being in your later twenties: “she doesn’t shout like that anymore”- good thing. Problem is that how our parents were when we were children, is how we remember them. Your mother is no longer shouting at you, but her mental representative in your brain is still doing the shouting.

“My friends, Honestly the one thing that helped me have 1% self esteem left while growing up, it were my friends, right through childhood”- meaning, if I am to do the math, that your mother (and your father for not protecting you) robbed you of 99% of your self-esteem.

“If I am so bad natured, how come I have the oldest friendships and he closest bonds”- replacing bad natured with excessive anger (which is what I did in my Feb 2 post to you, but now doubting the adjective excessive), then you are asking: if I (Jenny) feel excessive anger, how is it that unlike my colleagues at work who “vent out, shout and put down their assistants”, I have long-term, stable, close and respectful work relationships and personal  friendships?

You answered your own question: “With my closest ones with whom I have an equal relation, who don’t insult me or put me down, I have very good relations. Even with my father, he wronged me but because he wasn’t directly shouting insulting at me, I never spoke in any bad way with him… when someone pokes me.. and don’t pay any heed when I say it hurts me.. I try to do anything to make them see they are hurting me”-

– meaning that your anger is directed at those who (1) are aggressive toward you: insult you, put you down, shout at you, (2) do not pay any heed when you tell them that they are hurting you, and (3) are not equal to you, that is, in your mind, they are bigger/ stronger than you.

“My ex.. my mother.. These are the only two people in life I have had arguments with… with neither of them have I been irritable/ name calling which both of them have been to me”, “when repeatedly provoked.. after my speaking up had no effect, I went down to shouting, begging and crying. Yes I have been argumentative… when someone pokes me.. and don’t pay any heed when I say it hurts me.. I try to do anything to make them see they are hurting me”-

– As a small, weak child facing her big, strong aggressor (your mother), you cried and begged and tried to make her see that she was hurting you, so that she would stop hurting you. With your ex-boyfriend you did the same because you viewed yourself as small and weak, and you viewed him as big and strong.

“Through the 5 years, I have never ever name-called him, verbally used abusives, or put him down even when he did. Yes, I have been argumentative. Yes I have spoken up when I feel I was being wronged… this was my mother and the man I wanted to marry, I couldn’t just disengage so I did argue.. I was a cry-baby, I was nagging and clingy maybe but I was not angry, I was hurt… I have taken a lot from both my mom and my ex”-

– With your ex-boyfriend, in your 20s,  you behaved just as you behaved with your mother when you were a young child. “a cry baby.. nagging and clingy”, not aggressive.

“an angry woman would have broken ties with them”- young children never break ties with their parents.

“Yes I WAS A HURT CHILD AND A HURT GIRLFRIEND and I am making the distinction because had I been angry, I think I would become irritable, I would be lashing out at being even little slighted”- young children never lash at their parents.

“Honestly I’d been happier to be the angry one, it’s be better if I could just yell and insult and go  around thinking as if I am the boss of the world.. rather than being left as the crying begging woman who keeps spinning in self-doubt… I was not an angry child/ girlfriend. I was a hurt child/ girlfriend, not an angry one”-

– I have a new understanding today and indeed you are correct and I was wrong in my Feb 2 post when I focused on your anger and wrote: “you came into your first romantic relationship with a lot of unresolved anger, and therefore, you were indeed a bad girlfriend and you did ill-treat him. You were wrong and abusive”-

I will correct the above sentence best I can, to fit my new understanding into it: you came into your first romantic relationship unequipped to assert yourself and/ or leave the relationship when the relationship was extremely unsatisfying and troubling. Instead of leaving, you kept clinging to him, crying and begging.

Question #1: When you mentioned that you argued with your ex-boyfriend, I connected aggression with the verb to argue, but maybe for you, arguing means pleading. Can you give me an example of what you refer to as arguing (with your mother and/ or with your ex-boyfriend)?

As a young child, confronted by your mother the aggressor, you had no way to escape her, nor did you have the motivation to leave her, so you tried to get her to see that she was hurting you, crying and begging, pleading perhaps.

Question #2: do you remember crying and begging your mother when you were a young child?

Question # 3: Almost all of the relationship with your ex-boyfriend was long-distance. How far from each other did the two of you live and how much time did you physically spend with him while long-distance?

Because (1) this has been your one and only romantic relationship, (2) most of it was long-distance, and (3) you never mentioned an interest in another man, before or after this ex-boyfriend, I wonder if you’ve been motivated to not be in a romantic, short-distance relationship all along.

And last, if you choose to answer my questions, and otherwise in your future writing to me, please keep your posts focused and shorter in length.

anita