19. What to do when you’re MAD at your significant other
What to do when you’re mad at your significant other
3 steps to being angry and keeping your partner close (ish)
The 3 concepts are
1. Time out
2. Remember the flip flop
3. Focus on yourself
Your partner will make you mad… its inevitable… but you can do anger like your partner is someone you love.
This podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat prevent or cure any medical or relationship problem. Seek couples therapy in your area for help for your specific relationship.
Host:
Amber Dalsin., M.Sc., Psychologist. She is a Couples Therapist in Toronto. She does virtual individual relationship counseling and virtual couples therapy in downtown Toronto.
Transcription (this is a close transcription, there may be slight changes not reflected in this transcription).
What to do when you’re mad at your significant other
3 steps to being angry and keeping your partner close (ish)
Shaking with rage, flooded with emotions, or just plain angry… he you are not alone. The same person that makes our heart sip a beat, is the same person that makes our heart pound in our chest as our blood runs hot. Isn’t it funny how you can love someone so much, but they also have the power to infuriate you like no one else?
The ultimate paradox of conflict is the intense love you feel for someone and how livid you can be at the same time. How you want to be close and connected, yet say cruel words and escape… and it can all happen at the same time. We put up cool detached walls because all we want is acceptance and connection. Us humans are sure funny.
I’m reminded of how destructive people are when we are upset vs how cute my dog can be when he is upset. Yesterday I had back to back clients for 4 hours in a row and I had forgotten to feed my dog dinner. While usually if my dog is bothered with me, he will let out a low growl at me for a prolonged period of time, and when I look over he appears cute as can be then he walks over to what he wants. I assume this is his mild irritation followed by clear communication. Yesterday, who knows maybe I was so invested with my clients I missed his low growls. The next thing I know he was sitting next to met and let out 1 bark. When I looked down he just wagged his tail, pawed at me, and danced his little way over to his food. Now, he had a way of getting my attention, expressing his displeasure but also being so adorable in the process that I forgot to tell him he is not allowed to bark… and he got fed. It’s always interesting to watch how a dog can get what he wants by being adorable, however when us people are mad… maybe because someone forgot to meet us for dinner… it is a lot harder for us to bark and simultaneously wag our tail.
In episode 18, how loving relationships become angry relationships we talk about how love turns to anger, and this episode is a follow up… how to get through the anger. If we go back to Episode 5 4 doomed communication patterns, we have an episode that tells us what to avoid if we are going to do conflict with our partner.
In this episode we are going to talk about 3 concepts to help us though our anger with our partners, so we can keep them close ish.. even when we are mad.
The 3 concepts are
1. Time out
2. Remember the flip flop
3. Focus on yourself
How to deal with anger? The first thing is a time-out. When I introduced the idea of a time out to Janine and Aaron, Janine was…. Well… mad at me. She thought it was unfair that if Aaron had some something, she had to take a break. From her view, if he did something wrong, he should have to make it better for her…. And now. Her emotions felt sooo huge it was almost impossible for her to tolerate the difficult upset. I get it, Janine is not alone. In fact when time outs were introduced to me, I resented the idea.
However, the birth of this podcast comes from my desire to take the relationship science and make it easy for the everyday person… because using relationship science has transformed my relationship and my love life… imperfectly.
So what does the relationship science tell us about time outs… time outs prevent us from saying really hurtful things that cause further emotional wounds….even if in the moment it feels like the truth.
In the widely researched therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT, a great book is called Mind over Mood, Change how you feel, by changing the way you think. the main tenant if you can change what you think, you can change how you feel. Equally if you change how you feel, you can change how you think.
What we knows is when we are very emotionally aroused our thoughts become bias with that emotional state… it’s as if we have tunnel vision to see only the things that support our moods. For Janine, the first things she would think when she was mad at Aaron was how selfish he was, and the more worked up she got, the more selfish she thought he was, her mind without her conscious awareness would start going through past evidence that confirmed he was selfish. She would get stuck in a negative tunnel vision supported by her emotional state. Because she felt so out of control when she was this upset, her inclination was for him to fix it. However, because Aaron was also overwhelmed by her emotional state he usually only said or did things that escalated her more.
Janine was able to remember a time early in her relationship where Aaron had a taken her on a nice dinner date. The couple at the table next to them got engaged over dessert and to celebrate the special moment the restaurant got the entire place shots. Janine seldom did shots, however for some reason that night, her and Aaron did many shots. She was unable to remember exactly what happen but knew that over the course of the evening they had a massive arguments. Going to sleep in his place on the spare room floor with tear stains running down her face, she vowed to leave him in the morning. She remembered waking up in the morning and knowing that she wanted to take back whatever it was. Because things were a touch hazy she couldn’t even really remember what she was mad about. She remember that in that moment she had a choice, to be mad for the sake of being mad or to just go cuddle with him and say she was sorry. After explaining this incident Janine was struck that there have been many times that after going to bed angry, she awoke in the morning with a different attitude about their conflicts, being able to see it differently and willing to solve the problem rather than argue.
The moral of the story here is not go to sleep, it’s take a time out where you are not thinking about the issue. Easier said then done. At least when you are asleep, hopefully you’re not thinking, this allows you to calm down and come at conflict with a more balanced approach. A time out should be at least 20 minutes where you do anything but actively think about the fight, so go for a walk, call a friend, watch a tv show, read a book, scroll on Instagram.
Now that we know what to do initially, lets focus on concept 2- focus on the flip flop.
What is the flip flop?
Think in your mind about all of your partner’s best qualities.
Maybe they are your emotional rock
They are successful in their career
They love to party
They are laid back.
Now, in early relationship we are easily drawn to all of the best parts of these features of someone’s personality, So what is the flip flop? This is the idea that someone’s best quality is also their worst quality.
When you are seeing your partner in a positive light you might think emotional rock, however when you see them in a negative light that same emotional rock might be cold and unfeeling
Lets try the rest
They are successful in their career turn into all they care about is their career (not me)
They love to party turns into, they are such a child
They are laid back turns into uncaring
It’s all the frame for how we see our partner. So when you’re angry it can be helpful to tune into the good part of the same aspect of that characteristic.
For Janine one of her flip flops was he was drawn to Aaron’s humor which was dark and a bit insulting to others at times. However this humor lead them to plenty of nights of howling in laughter with tears running down their faces. The flop to Aaron’s behaviour was that sometimes his sarcasm bled into comments he made to her. Now Aaron did need to do some work on how her talked to Janine, but one thing we worked on was when he slipped infrequently and made a mistake she could say to herself “one thing I love about Aaron is his humor, at I would not ever want him to lose that, that means from time to time I have to tolerate the occasional misstep and remember it’s not directed at me. If it gets carried away I will bring it to his attention.
Step 3- focusing on yourself.
Now when we are sooooo angry- shaking, hot, heart pounding, all we want is to make the discomfort go away make someone responsible for how they have made us feel. We want someone else to fix the fire running through our veins.
Now… hopefully you have been willing to give the ideas of a time out, and looking for the flip flop a try, because those will make it easier to focus on yourself.
By focusing on yourself, how you feel, and what you need, it can keep the angry partner away from blame, attacking, criticism, or insulting. It restores our power to speak our truth and keep our side of the street clean, while assertively asking for our needs to be met.
When we are angry and waiting for someone else to fix our problems, we are powerless. But choosing to regulate our own feelings and be active (and kind) in the solution process we regain our power.
To regain our power it can be helpful to remember that every partner in every relationship will make mistakes. So how do you express your displeasure, self soothe, and ask for what you need.
When Aaron would use sarcasm with Janine- it was like instant muscle tension as her palms started to sweat. She would quickly mock him and state would he did in an exaggerated tone and call him her 3rd child. In doing this- ironically she wanted him to make it better, but he would detach, get cold and leave. Her response to the behaviour sabotaged what she really wanted- for him to talk nice to her. After she mocked him and called him a child, she hoped he would come to her and say sorry and correct. But this never happened. Ever.
By focusing on herself she was able to learn to understand her needs and communicate those to Aaron in way that had her needs met.
She started learning to say things like maybe you didn’t mean that the way I took it, I can you please say that again. Or coming over to him and giving him a kiss and saying…. Baabbbeee redo… she experimented with other ways of letting him know she was angry. By making these changes she was able to see what got her more of what she wanted… to be spoken to nicely and more consistent emotional connection.
So what to do when you’re mad at your significant other? Now I know… probably a lot of you are looking for ways to get your partner to fix it…. But if they haven’t fixed it yet. They probably need some help. They likely need you to talk to them like they are someone you love, and give them some coaching on how to treat you.
If you’re currently mad at your partner, it might feel entirely unfair to have to take a time out or remember the flip flop…. Because it feel like hey are wrong… I know…. So allow yourself to have that feeling… but maybe like Janine you too can remember a past incident where after the passage of time you were willing to compromise a little or you weren’t so mad.
Partner will make us mad… its inevitable… but we can keep working to do anger like our partner is someone we love.
This podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat prevent or cure any medical or relationship problem. Seek couples therapy in your area for help for your specific relationship.
