I have spent years of my life angry—an angry teenager, an angry young woman, an angry wife. I knew that I made the right choice to leave my husband when he closed the door between us after dropping me off at my new temporary home. As the door closed, a huge stone dropped from my chest and sun radiated into my heart. I was no longer angry. I could not believe that my body would give me such a sign that I was doing the right thing. I was no longer feeling that constriction of anger in my chest. I felt free.
Now I check in with my body on all my relationships—with myself, with friends, and with loved ones. Do I feel the anger rising in my chest? (That’s where I feel mine—you might feel yours somewhere else). I know that something is wrong when I feel the anger coming on.
Anger rises when our needs are unmet. But who’s to “blame” for that? We tend to blame others when our needs are not met. We hold others responsible for our happiness. But our happiness really depends on us being able to meet our own needs. That does not mean we have to do everything on our own. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Having our needs met includes asking others to help and participate and be part of our lives … but we still have to ask! We have to communicate our needs to have them met.
I remember how my mother (whom I love dearly) used to get upset when the jam was missing on her bread. She would sit there and stare at it and get more and more angry. Finally she would explode into blame, asking why my dad or I did not give her the jam. She believed that we should know that she needed jam on her bread since it was bare. Even though this happened reasonably often, I simply could never understand why she didn’t simply ask us to pass the jam.
Today I understand a bit more why this took place. My mother saw her family as responsible for her happiness. That, however, also indirectly made me responsible for her anger. She basically expected we would know what she needed at any given time. This, unfortunately, is how many of us perceive when a relationship is working—when our “other” instinctively knows what we need and takes action on it and takes care of meeting our needs.
We spend many good relationships expecting our loved ones to know what we need, or at least expecting them to learn what we want, right? Honestly, do you always even know yourself what you want? Clearly we cannot expect our significant other to understand and know our every whim. Do we expect that friends, family, spouses, and co-workers should know us “by now” and therefore act accordingly?
They know the person we appear to be, the person we project we are, our image. But who we truly are is someone who has needs to be met in order for the anger not to rise. This inner being of needs must be spoken and expressed. As someone once said, “ask and you shall receive.”