How To Show Anger Without Endangering Your Relationship With Your Lover

How To Show Anger Without Endangering Your Relationship With Your Lover

It’s glorious to be in love and be loved in return, isn’t it? Everything is rosy and wonderful.

Slowly, reality intrudes.

Maybe your lover has an annoying habit or mannerism.

Or their spending habits are exactly the opposite of yours.

Or they made a thoughtless comment about you…

You’re afraid to let your lover know you’re angry, because you think it will threaten the love–maybe drive them away. So you stay silent.

But the pressure of all the unsaid grudges and resentments will build up till one fine day, for “no reason” at all, when the proverbial last straw has been reached, you have a colossal melt-down.

Your partner will wonder “what’s wrong,” which will make you even more furious.

You end up saying irretrievable things–stuff you mean at that moment–but not when you’ve had a moment to cool down.

Unfortunately, once you’ve said them, you can’t unsay them, and they vibrate forever, to be brought up between you and your beloved at every argument you have.

The same goes for your partner.

Eventually, you accuse each other of all kinds of things, and the relationship goes downhill.

What a waste!

But true love always offers the space to share anger.

Goddess Sati’s father Daksha was having a ritual sacrifice and feast, and had invited all the gods and sages from the three worlds. As they passed Mount Kailash, Sati and her husband Shiva’s abode, Sati wondered where they were headed.

On hearing that they were visiting her parental home for a feast to which she and her husband hadn’t even been invited (a great dishonor to them), she was furious at her father.

She confronted Shiva, accusing her father of unworthy paternal conduct in not issuing them an invitation. After a while, she announced that she would go to the feast nevertheless.

Shiva feared that she might feel insulted on his behalf or her own, and to protect her from being torn between her love for the father and himself, he forbade her to go.

Sati got into a towering rage, and declared that nothing and no one would prevent her visiting her father’s house when she chose to do so. Without taking her leave of Shiva, she left, with only a small group to see her off.

Little did she know that it was the last time she would see him. At her father’s home, she felt Daksha’s insult to Shiva so deeply that she chose to give up her life rather than continuing to live as the daughter of the man who so dishonored her husband.

True love always offers the space to share anger.

Despite being in the middle of a quarrel, neither Shiva nor Sati fell into the trap of thinking that she didn’t love him any longer.

She was angry – first at her father’s behavior, and then at Shiva’s.

That’s all.

The secret to showing your anger?

Be angry at the behavior, not at the person.

As you practice showing your anger–calmly, focusing on the objectionable behavior–you will be surprised to find that rather than risking your relationship with your lover, you are actually strengthening it.

To stronger and deeper love!