What we’re going to be doing is talking about how we can manage anger. Not that anger is ever a problem in any kind of a relationship, let alone a marriage.
We know some families where, unfortunately, the characterization of the family or the marriage is anger. A lot of baggage then comes from the anger. So certainly we’ve got to make sure that anger is handled in appropriate ways.
People have different attitudes about anger. It’s almost cliche that you’ve got the mad parent, right? It seems like people expect someone in a marriage to always be angry. It’s common in a lot of the television shows we watch. That’s a problem because these are the fictitious tv shows, but that’s pouring over into our collective psyche. It affects some of our expectations of how things should be, but I think God has a lot better for us. We need to be following God and live the way he wants us to live. And that’s certainly not living into anger.
People will try to excuse their anger. They say things like, “Well Jesus got mad, right?” There’s a meme that’s been going around for a while that says, “When people say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibility.” But that’s so out of context. Jesus had a specific reason for what he did. This idea that I’m just going to be angry and everyone has just gotta put up with my anger is scary, especially in families. With kids, if mom or dad is always mad, it’s just, scary. It’s definitely an environment that would produce a lot of anxiety.
What are some things that would make you angry?
Bryon is an army brat. His dad was in the army 21 years. Timeliness has been a thing his whole life. He experiences anxiety when we’re running late. It makes him angry when we have to take something with us and we can’t find it. The kids will coming up to him saying, “I can’t find my Pokemon card” or, “My case for my glasses.” Whatever it is, if things were just put away where they belong, then we would not be searching all over the house. But in fairness in fairness he gets just as mad at himself. Jen thinks he actually gets madder at himself. Bryon gets on the warpath, pulling cushions off the couch. Trying to find the stupid little thing. That’s probably when Bryon gets the angriest. Anger is always that secondary emotion. In this case it starts off when Bryon gets anxious about being late. Then the anxiety leads to the anger.
To be honest though, Bryon’s emotion gets the better of him sometimes and he needs to control it, but anger is not always bad. It is a natural emotion. Everybody is going to experience some anger. It’s triggered by some anxiety or some fear. Anger is a response. It often manifests to help protect from that initial emotion. The anger in and of itself. But if it’s mishandled, that’s when the anger is going to be a bad thing.
Even God, when we look at scripture, God got angry. Look at the prophets. He got really angry at Israel for their idolatry. He called their idolatry adultery. At one point God even divorced Israel (Jer 3:8). God divorced Israel because he was so mad at them because they were doing the wrong thing. They were committing adultery.
It’s okay to feel angry. Going back to the illustration of the beginning. Jesus chased people out of the temple because the money changers and all those people in the temple, they were keeping people from God. They were trying to force people away from God and preventing them from experiencing the fullness God. And Jesus got angry about it.
Yet, if anybody can do the angry scorched the earth, it is literally God. But, that’s not who he is. that’s not in his character It’s not that he can’t act and punish for these sins as he has certainly done. Think of the story of Noah. At the same time, however, he’s always here. He always loves us. He always provides that redemption and that’s particularly the case by sending Jesus to us. That’s important to bring out because also when you look at the prophets, you see God’s sadness and feelings of betrayal. But also, you see, his love. You see him wanting to reach out and bring people back.
Let’s talk about managing our anger though, because we think there’s a passage in Ephesians that really is important for this. It’s something that people don’t always understand completely. “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on the cause of your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity (Eph 4:26-27). Some translations don’t say the cause of your anger just says don’t let the sun go down on your anger. That’s an interesting passage because it presumes you will get angry. We all do. This passage, however, is not only talking about managing anger in marriage. If you took this literally, you can’t go to bed, you can’t go to sleep until you resolve this issue because you’re giving a devil’s foothold. Well, if that’s true, that would mean any time you were angry with anyone over anything, you can’t go to sleep until you resolve the issue.
This statement is proverbial. Paul wasn’t giving a command from God. He’s talking about good principles and good ideas. Don’t let your anger keep going. And we’ve seen this, right? When people don’t resolve their anger, it gets worse and worse. It builds and it festers. This passage is saying don’t marinate in your anger. You don’t want your anger to just get soaked up into you.
That point about not giving the devil a foothold is important also. You really do give the anger power over you when you let it fester. When you just marinated it. As you were saying, you give that anger power and control over you and the devil will take advantage of that and tempt you. When our kids were little, we were teaching them not to have temper tantrums, teaching them how to deal with their emotions. Toddlers start feeling things and they just don’t know what they’re feeling or how to deal with it. We would always tell them when they were getting angry, you’ve got to control your emotions, don’t let your emotions control you.
We never want to say it’s not okay to feel emotions because that’s repression, that’s something that’s unhealthy and wrong. Your emotions aren’t in and of themselves bad. They’re a response that you’re having to a situation. We can’t, however, let those emotions control us.
It’s wise to separate; I am so angry at this entire person versus I’m angry or I’m frustrated about a situation. We always talk about the idea of team marriage. We’re on the same team. We win or we lose together. There’s no winner or loser between the two of us because if one is saying I’m the winner, the other one’s a loser, guess what? You both lost.
Even with that we like this language better. I’m feeling angry rather than I am angry. When you say I am angry now, you’re using language of identity, but you’re not anger. We are not our anger. We feel our anger. Anger is something that is part of us, but just as much as our finger is part of us but our finger is not who we are. It’s an aspect of us. If we should lose our anger, we don’t become less ourselves. Sometimes people who fester in their anger become so identified with their anger that they can’t separate what they’re feeling from who they are.
Anger is a feeling felt for very specific reasons. Anger should not be part of our character. That’s something that you certainly don’t want. You don’t want to be characterized by anger. You don’t want anger to be a part of your character.
Sometimes when dealing with anger, the best choice is to take a break and come back to the issue later. But you need to make sure you’re being proactive about that, especially in a marriage. Absolutely. A big part of that is because of the physiology of anger. It’s pretty consistent for most people. It all starts in our limbic system. It’s all a chemical response in our brain to a stimulus. Anger is often because your fight or flight reaction is being triggered. Your body is being flooded with the chemicals that prepare you for action. Your capillaries swell your blood starts pumping. Bryon can feel it when he’s really angry. He can feel his heart start racing. He can feel himself getting angry and a couple of things happen. He grits his teeth. He doubles up his fists. His body is responding to the stimulus getting ready to fight.
The idea is that you’re separating yourself from the conflict for a time. It’s not like you’re throwing up your hands and walking out on or walking away from your spouse. The relationship is important.
You also want to look at yourself and see how you are contributing to this conflict. Dealing with anger requires a lot of introspection. It requires a lot of prayer. You need to discover why you are angry and what part you are playing in the conflict. The answer to that is huge. That’s part of growing in holiness.
So we really need to make sure that our anger is controlled. It needs to be dealt with quickly. Not necessarily in the moment because sometimes you need to unplug and deal with the physiology of it.
That One Awkward Conversation – Show Notes
We’re starting this out and we’re talking about conflict because that’s one of the most common things in marriage. As an attorney one of Jen’s main jobs is resolving conflict. But conflict is not always resolved smoothly.
Jen had been in practice about seven years or so. And she was representing a gentleman on a divorce case. Jen, her client, opposing counsel, and the wife had just appeared before the judge. Jen had just told the judge on the record that her client had some very significant vision impairment. The other attorney wasn’t happy with what the judge was ruling. Her client started walking away and he accidentally bumped into this other attorney and legitimately did not see him because of his vision impairment. The attorney got mad and literally chased Jen’s client down the hallway and got eight inches away from the guy’s face.
Obviously conflict escalating to throwing hands is not where we want to go, especially when we talk about marriage. We’ve talked about this a lot. And obviously we’ve had conflicts. No one’s throwing hands, but conflicts happen in marriage. It’s a normal thing.
A lot of couples we’ve talked to in premarital counseling will tell us that they never have conflict. But lack of conflict is bad, because that means that someone is not expressing themself or putting out what your opinions are and what’s going on. Conflict is a very healthy thing because we’re unique individuals and we have different needs. We have different goals. We have different desires and we need to make sure that we’re not downplaying who we are to just blend into a relationship because that’s not healthy.
Conflict is important because of what marriage is. The purpose of marriage isn’t for people just to be happy. Happiness is a horrible goal for a marriage because happiness is fleeting. There are three purposes for marriage, (1) experiencing mature, fulfilling love, (2) growing to be more like Jesus, and (3) representing God to the people around us.
We’re both this journey, just like you: to be more like Jesus. We want to make sure that we’re fulfilling that purpose of marriage. You don’t, however, always get there in the prettiest kinds of ways. Conflict is never comfortable. Conflict isn’t pleasant. It’s not fun, but it’s important. If there’s not conflict in your marriage, then someone isn’t being honest. Someone is either just hiding their personality or over doing the submission aspect of marriage.
You see, conflict isn’t bad. Mishandled conflict is bad. That’s the problem. When we talk to couples who are dealing with conflict and they want to avoid it, it’s not the conflict they want to avoid. It’s the mishandled conflict. There’s a false idea that when you bring up an issue and you get to the other side of that with this person, it’s for sure going to be worse. And that’s not true. A lot of time you’re just that one awkward conversation or difficult conversation away from having that thriving marriage That conflict is really there to strengthen your relationship when it’s handled the right way. It’s that one choice you need to make and it’s so funny too because people want that but they’re afraid of what the outcome might be.
The problem is, we’ve all experienced mishandled conflict. What we mean is conflict isn’t resolved appropriately. Perhaps you tried to resolve the conflict but it became angry. It became, “I’m going to demand what I want or I’m going to say this isn’t important enough to me and I’m just gonna walk away.
Taking a break to unplug can be ok but it’s important to be clear and communicate that you want to come back and resolve the issue. When you just walk away with no resolution what you communicate to your spouse is, “You’re not important enough to me to deal with this.”
How then do we resolve conflict ? What are the keys to resolving conflict in a positive way?
Between the two of us, we we’ve really come up with a few principles:
Be Kind
Be Clear
Be Present
Kindness is one of the fruits of the spirit that Paul outlines in Galatians 5:22. Kindness allows you to speak to the heart of your spouse and show. Kindness shows that you love each other, that you care about each other, and you want what is best for each other.
Also kindness is just frankly a good idea when dealing with conflict. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle response turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath” (NET). We’re are talking and Bryon is upset. If Bryon goes after Jen throwing the knife hand acting like a drill sergeant Jen will have no desire to work with him. Bryon just completely shut Jen down and put her in a situation to defend herself because he’s attacked her. The natural responsive when you’re attacked is defend yourself. When you’re kind, when you’re considerate, it just makes sense because the goal isn’t to get your way. The goal is to have a stronger marriage. The goal is to have a thriving marriage, to experiencing fulfilling love, to be more like Jesus. It’s all about living a holy life and ultimately we want to get out of it being more holy than we were before the conflict started.
You also need to be clear. You need communicate clearly what the conflict is, what your goals are, and what you want to have done. Bryon’s dad used to joke around saying, “Don’t drop hints. I’m not smart enough to pick them up.” We have to say what we’re upset about. We have to say why we’re upset. We have to say what outcome we want from the conversation.
For us that can get tricky in some of the simplest conversations because of our careers. There are times when Bryon has to say to Jen, “Stop, repeat everything you just said using different words because you just started speaking legalese.” Jen has to do the same thing. The military loves acronyms. Bryon can say a complete sentence without using a single real word.
In addition to kindness and clarity we need to be present. We need to be present physically, mentally, and emotionally. We can’t be checked out on our phones. We can’t be checked out watching a tv show. We can’t be busy with kids or cooking dinner. We really have to make sure that we’re present for our spouse as we’re having these more difficult or more awkward conversations and efforts to try to resolve the conflict.
It’s not enough to be physically, mentally, and emotionally present. We’ve also got to handle conflicts in the present tense. The conflict that you’re having is the only conflict you’re dealing with, that not what happened 6, 12, 18 months ago with this boyfriend or girlfriend you had in high school or whatever it is. It’s not helpful to try to work through more than the current conflict. You, also, don’t want to anticipate future conflicts. Don’t presume your spouse is going to do this or that other thing that you don’t like. The conflicts you have have to be in the present tense.
Being present also means allowing each other space to engage in the conversation. Dialogues resolve conflicts not monologues. Both of us are theatre people. We both know how to monologue. Everyone loves to see a good monologue in a Shakespearean play, or that guy from Antman explaining in precise detail everything that Scott Lang missed during the blip. (I’m sorry if you haven’t seen the MCU movies we can’t help you.) No one loves to listen to their spouse monologue about all the stuff they’ve screwed up.
Conflict is really important in marriage. We’re really good at lying to ourselves. We’re really good at thinking we’re the greatest. We’re really good at hiding. Yet, between the two of us, we’re really good at pointing out when we’re lying to ourselves. We need each other to do that because that’s how we develop in holiness. That’s where we grow to be more like Jesus by having someone tell us when we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing. But it is never comfortable. We always feel anxiety when we confront each other because there’s always the chance that we’re going to come at this the wrong way or It will be received in a way that’s not positive. And to be honest, that happens sometimes. It’s, however, always better in the long run when we get through it. In the end we’re closer to each other. We’re closer to God because we were able to grow through the conflict.
So as we just wrap up today, the big things we we want you to remember is the choice to have that conflict, is that choice you may need to make to have that thriving marriage. Don’t hide from conflict because that’s not going to give you the marriage you want. In that conflict be kind, be clear, and be present in the conversation and then you will be able to have a thriving marriage.