Anger is one of the four fundamental human emotions (mad, sad, glad, scared) and is not something I do well.
I have lately been fussing with Cohiba a bit, and this is really uncharted territory for me. I did not grow up with models who fought, got angry or resolved things in a respectful way. My father did what he wanted – even when it hurt his family – and fuck you for being mad about it. You don’t count.
My mom did what a battered wife did to protect herself and her child and still express herself. She mostly took it out of herself, one time on me, and then passive-aggressively lashed out at him.
Cohiba and I have been mad at each other before, and each time, I’ve stumbled over myself trying to figure out what and how to do it. I took a different path this time with him, and we’ll see how it goes. I’m afraid it’s not effective.
What do I mean by effective?
That the thing I’m angry about won’t get resolved.
So I guess I know how to be angry, I just don’t know how to express it, control it and harness it.
What could I harness it for? What is the point of anger?
It lets us know when our personal sense of justice is violated, right? Is that it? But it doesn’t right the wrong.
So what is the point of anger? What do you think?
I Didn't Just Wake Up This Morning With A Craving 
My wife and I went through something like this, because I was a “let’s get it all on the table” person, and she was a “avoid conflict at all costs” person.
Anger can be used for good; like pain, It can be a sign that something is wrong and provide the motivation it takes to fix it. Anger can be used as an excuse to hurt people, too. But it isn’t anger that hurts people; it’s the actions we take in response to it.
To me, being angry is okay; what’s more, it’s going to happen whether you try to mask it or not.
“it’s going to happen whether you try to mask it or not.” I like that; a simple reminder that its a fact of life. That helps to think about on what has otherwise been a scary day.
So far, I’ve been trying to detach from my feelings of anger. I did that when I was a kid with my dad: getting angry with him was fruitless, so why bother? But then I realized, if I’m detaching from anger, there’s a good chance I’m detaching from other feelings as well, like happiness or joy of being with him.
I totally agree with Sibelius’ point – anger is an important emotion and needs to be felt, and it gives us that kick that we need to actually do something radical. However, in many situations, that’s not the best thing to do.
There is plenty of advice (good and bad) out there to control anger and frustration – I can’t claim to be an expert, but walking away rarely resolves the situation. It just leaves people more frustrated and you can’t bring the issue up again for fear of renewing the conflict.
I just now saw this; sorry for my late reply! And, yeah, now that I think about it, walking away when I’m pissed off, while it does let me cool off and choose my words with care, doesn’t eliminate or change the thing that got me in the first place.
No worries! Yeah definitely, walking away needs to be done sparingly 🙂