What do you do when you're really angry?

It’s a few days to having my procedure and I woke up okay. Well waking up for me these days has become a series of “waking ups” per morning. First I wake up at 5.30 am when my husband’s alarm on the cell phone goes off so he can get dressed for work, that’s if he hasn’t woken up a few time earlier just to check that he hasn’t overslept and that the alarm hasn’t already gone off. The silly phone makes some silly musical sound each time he flips it open to check the time and again when he flips it shut. Oh that darn thing. Anyway I again wake up at about 5.45 to jump in my clothes and drive him to the train station. I get back home at 6 and go to the rest room where I read a bit of my daily devotional and go back to bed. I wake up every hour after that until I finally get up at 8 and say my prayers then race around getting ready for work and out the door. It leaves me feeling woozy in the head like I haven’t had enough sleep even though I had slept for several hours. But all that is another story.

Today my final awakening was by a text message which came in. I forwarded it to my hubby as requested and he called a few minutes later. By that time I was already awake reading my bible though he apologised for waking me up. I wondered which of the waking me up he was apologising for. Anyway I was quite happy to hear his voice and help him with whatever he wanted. The trouble started when I started praying and I kept remembering how he annoyed me last night. Funny I forgot all about it last night soon after he said whatever it was. But this morning its back full force. I gave up trying to pray and started breakfast only to start crying, quite uncontrollably too. I was so upset I cried through mouthfuls. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and what I saw in the mirror on Monday morning really frightened me. I just could not stop. I thought of calling my sister in law to come and get me but I didn’t want to put anyone through that much trouble. She’s an hour’s drive away. I was worried I was having a true meltdown, a nervous breakdown. God forbid. The thought of being so weak eventually made me calm down a bit. It was terrible.

True I get delayed reactions. That’s not strange for me. I discovered a long time ago that it’s like that with me. That’s just how I’m made. I do get these seriously delayed reactions to serious issues. I guess it has its value since I’m less likely to blow up in anyone’s face on the spot. But when I eventually react the recipient has turned victim. They, like my husband, can’t understand what I’m on about. Why the high drama? Why is she over reacting? Why is she blowing this out of proportion? Somebody help! They are now the victim not me. “12 hours later?”He asked. I was really pissed off especially because he wasn’t remorseful and didn’t sympathise or empathise with me. It’s just not fair how he isn’t seeing my point and isn’t appreciating how bad I feel. That just made me cry some more. Okay I’m not a cry baby. It may have been exacerbated by the medication I’m on in readiness for the procedure. But I truly felt misused.

This brings me to the question. How do we react when our spouses upset us? I mean really upset us? What proportion of reaction is appropriate? I mean you clean and cook, ride and drive and work all day long. Then you come back home and do it all over again. Then you’re expected to purr like a kitten at the end of it all. How do they think you achieve all that if you’re not on over drive? Of course we’re on overdrive.

I decided to write him an email. He reads his mails every night and will definitely see it. In fact if you want to get him to pay attention to something, even lengthy stuff, put it in an email or make it part of the bible. The later is more tedious to do since we are prohibited from adding to the bible and can no longer contact the divinely inspired writers to help us here. Not that what I want to write to him at this very moment when I’m livid is divinely inspired or will even meet with their approval. So that leaves me with the email option.

I wrote out my grievance and poured out my heart through unseeing eyes filled with tears. Then I wiped then off and tried to read through. Ah now I see and decide I really don’t want to tear him down with these harsh words. Even when I feel he doesn’t care or hasn’t shown enough care about my feelings I am still worried about his. But I thought the essence of this was to hurt him and ruin his day like he is ruining mine? Eh... may be not. My power of invectives is amazing and heaven help whoever I choose to unleash it on. So I hesitate. I’m still am worried about the long term effect of my words and how they may hurt his pride. Oh what’s the use? I finish the email and save it as draft because I figure the words will only hurt him even if they truly explain why I have taken so much offence at what he said. He just won’t get it and yet I feel he must be made to appreciate the gravity of the issue at hand.

What to do? I’m leaving home, if only for the night. That should teach him. Except that I can’t quite figure out where to go. If I go to my family they’ll just get upset with him and loose respect for him. I don’t want that. Also they may think we’ve been fighting over this all night and that he has been simply horrible to me. That’s not the case. In fact we spent a few hours in bed reading, he showing me the new revelations from the bible and me sharing an article from a magazine I was reading. Then we spent the night in each other’s arms as usual. Then he offered to walk to the station asking a few times before he left if I was alright. I can’t think of a more glorious picture of domestic bliss. So where is all this pain coming from?

So I thought of going to stay at a hotel. That may not be a great idea since he may just think it was premeditated and a guise for some planned rendezvous. I’m just getting angrier as every action I consider taking is likely to backfire on me. Now if he has taken any of these actions no one would have misread them, or would they? It seems I’m upset yet left with no avenue to vent my annoyance and that leaves me feeling frustrated. I would like to show that I am upset but I also would like to keep it within the limits of lucid reason so that the point is not lost. I once heard of a woman who caught her husband cheating and went out and got herself some. Now that’s just desert, nes’t pas? This thin balance is so easily upset that I find it’s easier just to get quietly upset and quietly get over it and not expect any apology or redress. That seems to be the only way out. What do you think?

Resolving Marital Conflicts

All marriages have conflicts.

Every couple has that moment when they quarrel and can’t remember why the one loves the other and how they got to this point. He makes you so furious you wonder why you spend so much of your energy and time making his life worth living and all he can do is treat you like you don’t mean a thing. Or maybe she just can’t get the simplest arithmetic right and always seems to forget to pay the bills on time or goes shopping when your bank account is at its lowest. Can’t she get it? Then she nags as well. Oh darn! How did you get yourself into this marriage?
No one is perfect; at lease no one person is perfect for everyone every time. I think it begins when you start preparing for the wedding and you get all stressed out and take it out on each other. Also you realise you can actually relax after all these time of being on your best behaviour and let your feelings show. In other words, you begin to take each other for granted.
There will always be cause for disagreement. There are some rare couples who never fight. They have each found ways to either overlook everything the other does to offend them or suppress their emotions. This may not be a healthy option on the long run as it allows for a build up of resentment which eventually explodes and may destroy the union. It may also lead to diminishing intimacy or may keep the level of intimacy at an even low key. So it appears there is a constant state of tranquillity when really you have little in common and share very little of your selves with each other just to maintain the peace. You need to be able to express your individuality within the context of the union without feeling stifled.
It’s not about being right:
For the rest of us who do get mad at each other, we need to remember that marriage is not about who is right and who is wrong, but about our commitment to each other’s wellbeing and the success of our union. The odds are stacked high against the success of any marriage and to lose sight of the reason you teamed in the first place is a sure way to ending up in failure.
There is a way to “fight forward” if you would excuse my made up phrase. By this I mean we turn a fight into an opportunity to understand our spouse better and strengthen our relationship. When you get into a fight with your spouse, if you are truly honest neither of you is happy. In fact you are both miserable even when you are right and the other is wrong and you have said so loud and clear. A fight with someone we really care about does that to us. It makes us miserable. And we don’t like the fact that we succumbed and got into the fight, not after we’ve promised ourselves that we would never fight again at least not in front of the children.
But if we realise that it’s not a fight to pull the other down, to prove that we are right and the other is wrong, it’s not a fight to the finish but an opportunity to get a better understanding of the other person’s perspective, then we may just save the day. If we approach the other’s view with empathy then we may just appreciate where the other is coming from. Most times when your spouse gets angry or complains about something you consider trivial, it may be a symptom of something deeper. So it won’t do to dismiss their complaint as whining or even dismiss the person as being silly or childish. If we keep doing this the resentment builds up and one day they’d simply give up on us and, God forbid, give up on our marriage and move on.
An important starting point is to understand that your spouse is an adult. No one likes to be treated like a child, least of all, men. No adult throws tantrums without a cause so even if the root he or she is hinging it all on seems trivial understand that they have an issue, justified or not and that they are expressing dissatisfaction because they believe you should or could have done something differently. So listen and don’t trivialize their grievance.
Empathise with your aggrieved spouse:
It is not easy to see another person’s point of view when they have succeeded in alienating you by upsetting you. But if you have decided in advance of every fight that you are going to try and place yourself in his or her shoe to understand their stand point even when you feel aggrieved then you have armed yourself to fight forward. Rather than descend into the arena and fight tooth and nail, you step back and refuse to be drawn into the yelling, name-calling and fire spitting bout that usually characterises spousal fights. Looking at the complaint from the position of the complainant, you will have a clearer vision of what the real issue is and be able to identify the solution. Dr Daniel Shapiro in his article, “before your next fight read this” gives a good illustration of this scenario. A wife wakes her husband up early Saturday morning complaining that he failed to do the dishes like he promised. She wouldn’t let up. He starts to get upset particularly as he only just crawled into bed at about 4 am having slaved away all night figuring out the tax matters. He allows his training and advance plan for fight situations to kick in rather than get furious. What’s going on here? What is his wife really feeling? She has to get up early, mind the kid, get him to school, rush off to work, work all day, pick him up from school, feed him, see him through home work and then get to the household chores. He concluded that if he was in her shoes he would be overwhelmed and what’s more he told her so. She really wasn’t happy to listen but he pressed on resisting the strong urge to get angry himself. It didn’t take long for her to explain that she really felt the need to have a little time to herself sometimes and could he help a little more. See, issue resolved without a major meltdown.
I’m on your side - team up with your spouse:
The one person we can really be sure is on our side is our spouse. Unless we have so fouled up that all trust and love is lost, we can be sure and remain certain that we are a team. It will serve us well to remember this at all times and particularly when conflicts arise. So when you get upset and start fighting, don’t fight as if you aim to utterly annihilate your foe with all the artillery at your disposal. This is not a war, it is a battle. Why win this battle and lose the war that ensures your marriage remains a going concern? Your focus is to help your significant other understand how you feel about a thing and what they can do to move your home closer to the haven you both are working towards. So express yourself lucidly. Try to calm down and not speak in anger. Don’t clamp up either. That’s not going to get you both anywhere. Neither of you can read minds. Don’t shout; particularly not in the presence of children. When you shout, all men hear is “bla bla bla bla bla!” What women see is yet another tyrant father figure who is trying to beat them down so they go into a “fight” or “flight” mode. Even if they don’t move their feet, they either mentally retreat from you so that nothing you says has any impact, or they begin to formulate a suitable punishment for you in their minds. God help you if they put this plan into action. It is important to communicate your feelings in a way that does not put the listener on the defensive. Remember you are on the same side so the intention is not to lay blames but to shine some light on what is wrong and agree on a course of action to right the wrong.
Remember each individual is different so he or she may not see things like you do. If you are hoping for a change in the person’s nature to get to where you would like your home to be, it may take some doing as adults don’t change easily if at all. So if you can change your habit, feeling or response to a thing or situation, it may be an easier route to take.
Address minor issues before they escalate:
Conflicts seem to start from seemingly little things. Take for example the issue of the husband who failed to wash the dishes. It appears like just a little oversight and the wife is over reacting. It is only when you dig deeper that the real issues of being overwhelmed and having little or no time to herself come up. Sometimes because we don’t discuss the issue and resolve them as they arise, they pile up, we bottle up our resentment until we blow up when least expected, usually over a minor misdemeanour. Maybe his hooting his horn and shouting at you to hurry up or you will be late for that office party. He had forgotten that it was his shirt that got stained at the last minute and you had to wash and iron the spot dry since he won’t agree to wear something else. He also forgot that he insisted you change your outfit since he believed a little black dress is more appropriate than the emerald you had worn. Your carefully coiffure hair had gone askew and you had to put it right again but only after attending to your son who woke up and caught you in the house because you spent all this extra time and clung to you as he suspected, quite rightly, that you were going off without him. Now you’re out of breath and twisting your ankle in an attempt to run to the car.
Why do you have to go to this party anyway? It’s not as if his colleagues care a hoot about you; and that snobbish wife his boss has now married thinks she is made of gold and everyone else of dross. It doesn’t help that he didn’t tell you until he got back from work tonight when he realised everyone else was bringing their wives. Well he was planning to go without you anyway so why doesn’t he go by himself since you are not good enough to mingle with his precious friends and colleagues anyway. You tell him so in no uncertain terms as you step in the car.
After a week of hard work at the office and minding the baby and doing school runs, all you get is being yelled at after being told you’re not good enough. Well, if the truth be told he didn’t actually say you were not good enough in words but having omitted to invite you to the party just like he failed to invite you to the promotion party for his class mate and the gold retreat last year and now you had to change your dress that always turned heads, you must reach the conclusion that he is ashamed of you although you can’t figure out why. You fitted perfectly when he married you now he’s got this new fancy job, you’re no longer classy enough.
Your husband’s temper is beginning to rise to match yours. But thankfully he had the opportunity of reading this article and is now practising the art of empathy and remembers that there may be a deeper reason for your fury. He realises that you have been through a lot and have managed to shipshape the house and leave instructions and provisions for your son and the home before dressing up at short notice. You would certainly need a little more time and a few minutes lateness would not be considered rude. You may also have felt left out of the circle since he got this new job but the organizational culture is so different that he is having a hard time knowing what’s expected. Next time he will ask specifically whether spouses are welcome and be sure to tell you in advance. And he really loves the emerald dress it’s just that you’ve worn it ever so often and the black dress which he gave you for your birthday shows off your legs nicely and has yet to be worn. He really wants to show you off and he is sorry he got you all rustled. There! All issues addressed without emptying the arsenal. At least you now know that he is proud of you and appreciates your contribution to your lovely home and life.
There are some conflicts so grand that having tried all these, the union remains threatened. Infidelity is one of those taken so seriously you wonder if you’ll ever be able to get over the feeling of betrayal and love on. I’ll be posting an article on this shortly so watch out.
Meanwhile try out some of these ideas. You will certain begin to see the difference a change in attitude can make. Remember you love this person. Keep this in mind always. Let me know how things change.

What you will do matters, what remains is to do it

Procrastination is the greatest thief not only of our time but of our success.

How often have you thought of a brilliant idea for a business, a job, an innovative tool, anything and then you keep putting it off until you can’t quite remember it anymore. Someone said the greatest labour saving invention of today is “tomorrow”. That may be true, but only when you have mined “today” to its fullest capacity. So that you don’t burn out, you rest and pick it up again tomorrow.

This is very different from procrastinating. I will send that memo after lunch. I will mail that application tomorrow. I will visit my Nan next weekend. I will organize that trip for the children next summer. I will start that business when I have enough money or when the baby starts school. It goes on and on. The list of possible excuses is endless. I had a tough time writing this article. I kept putting it off. Not because I didn’t want to get on with it or because I didn’t have a deadline, but because I wanted to write on so many other topics that I liked better. This particular topic speaks to me and maybe I didn’t want to confront my own self. But I realize that we all need to hear this from time to time.

We are all guilty of it. Do your home work before going out to play. No mum, I’ve got time. Get that job application posted today. Nope, I’ve still got time. Send that business plan to you bank manager now. Nope, I’ve got time. Call that client back now. Nope, I’ve got time. Then American Idol is over and its 11.00 p.m. and you have to dive into bed or you’ll never get up on time for school tomorrow. The deadline for the job application is tomorrow and even if you posted it now, it wouldn’t get there because the mail man just picked up the post at 6. That’s how our time gets stolen and our goals get deferred.

I listened to George Michael singing “Praying for Time” at the finale of American Idol and it really got me thinking. “Do you think we have time?” he asks. Maybe we should all pray for time he admonishes. He should know. He got so cross with Sony in the 1990s he abandoned his career stateside. 17 years after, he is starting to tour the United States. Surely he would know how it feels for time to have gone by you, time you can never reclaim. It just slips through your fingers like fine sand from the beach and where does that leave you? He must have thought at the time, being so young, famous and full of energy, that a few years would not matter. But I’m sure he would rather have been doing what he loves all of those 17 years rather than starting to piece it all together now. Do we think we have time, he asks. God, please give us time.

We cannot reclaim time spent under achieving. Its true God promised to restore the years the locust stole from us. But why do we have to lose all that time to the locust of procrastination and then spend even more time and energy fasting and praying for restoration? We are underachieving. That’s what it is when we have the potentials and we just don’t do anything or fail to do enough with it. Marginal success is just about as good as no success at all. We really ought to focus on getting the best out of ourselves. If we are not doing that which challenges us, we get bored, restive and depressed. Some have opined that we are custodians of our talents and they were given to us not only for our own good but the blessings it will bring to someone else out there.

Sometimes we know what we ought to be doing. We know what new path to explore, what direction we ought to be working towards whether it be in our career, business or even spiritual life. We even know how to get to that dream we have in sight. But we just can’t get ourselves to start on it. Other things fill our time and take our attention. We retain the status quo and moan about what is lacking in our lives when we know the exact way to get there. We may also be afraid to change what works or maybe it isn’t working but it is at least comforting. We will do that other stuff, lead that exiting new life, and follow that new career path tomorrow. I’m still young, I’ve got time. Ask Mr. George Michael before you go off on that tangent.

What you will do matters. You already have a vision of what you want to achieve. You have that dream. This is of great importance. It is what will change the world, at least your world. That’s what you will do someday soon. Well then make that someday today.

All that remains is to do it. Without backing your dreams with action, they remain just that, dreams. Just do it. There is something about life that provides you with the resources for success once you reach out. But I don’t know where to start, you say. Start by writing it down. This helps you think it through. It helps you figure out what resources you would need. List out the ones you have and the ones you don’t. Pray about it. Discuss it with people who can provide answers to your questions. You are on your way to success. Most of all do what you can today. Don’t leave it till tomorrow. Tomorrow will come with its own load of demands on your time and distractions to your mind.

It really matters what you will do, all that remains is to do it.