Love, Anger and Intimacy
By David R. Mace
Dr. David R. Mace was, in my view, the very best authority in the world on marriage and the family from a Christian perspective. A Methodist minister turned Quaker, a British native turned American, an adventurous motorcyclist turned tender counselor, and an over-achieving author-speaker-minister-activist turned gentle friend, he never hesitated to work sacrificially in support of Christian marriages and Christian homes. I introduced him in 1966 to Baptists in the South; and some ten years later I personally introduced him when he rose to declare that this was the most important speech he had ever made. The message was delivered to the Christian Life Commission`s national seminar on "Help for Families" in Orlando, Florida on March 28, 1979. It is as timely now as then. Hear him.
I have spent most of my professional life working for better marriages and better families, in a total of sixty-one countries of the world. I have been in at the early beginning of marriage and family counseling. I have tried to study the family closely, and to keep up with the literature in the field.
Now, in my later years, I have come to see that much of what I have been doing and thinking has been secondary and peripheral. I have become deeply convinced that we have been ignoring the vital, central reality about the business of living together in families. We have made tremendous efforts to improve the social environment of the family, and I hope we shall continue to do so. We have made great advances in identifying the areas in which families manifest functional dislocation, and I am very happy about that deeper understanding. We have vastly improved our skills in offering help to families in serious trouble, and trained hundreds of thousands of professionals to use these skills.
However, I believe that behind all these studies and efforts there is something vital and essential that we have missed. Let me try to spell it out, very simply, under four headings:
When a marriage ends in divorce, or a family breaks down, the failure always takes place from the inside.
The generally supposed causes of marital trouble-difficulties with sex, money, in-laws, and child raising-are not the real causes. These are only the arenas in which the inner failure of the relationship is outwardly demonstrated.
The inner failure of a close relationship takes place always for the same reason-because the persons involved have been unable to achieve mutual love and intimacy.
The failure to achieve love and intimacy is almost always due to the inability of the persons concerned to deal creatively with anger.
Let me make two other statements that may well surprise you.
Marriage and family living generates, in normal people, more anger than they experience in any other social situation in which they habitually find themselves.
The overwhelming majority of family members know of only two ways of dealing with anger-to vent it, or to suppress it. Both of these methods are destructive of love and intimacy. There is a third method, but most members of families don`t even know that it exists, so of course they are quite unable to make use of it.
If you have followed me so far, you will realize that I am now in serious trouble. I have opened up a subject of vast importance; but in the short space at my disposal I can`t possibly do justice to it.
Never mind; let me do what I can, and let the chips fall where they may. This is all very new material, which can`t be fitted into any of our existing frames of reference; so the chances are great that I shall be misunderstood. But I must take that risk, because what I have to say is vital not only to our culture in general, but even more vital to practicing Christians in our culture.
To simplify our discussion, I shall from now on confine my attention to marriage-but let me make it clear that what I have to say applies equally, with minor modifications, to all other family relationships.
What are two married people trying to do? Outwardly, they are creating a new unit of human society. The social obligations of marriage are clearly stated in the wedding services of most churches. They are to beget children, to keep sex under reasonable control, and to foster man/woman companionship. The last of these three has, throughout most of Christian history, been given little attention. Today, in the judgment of most people, it has moved up to first place. The primary goal of modern marriage, whether we approve of it or not, is to achieve a close relationship of love and intimacy.
We could talk for a long time about what love really means. But it will serve my purpose better if I focus on intimacy, which is the manifestation of real love, and also the test of its validity. A simple definition of intimacy is "shared privacy." Most of us live in a big, complex world where multitudes of people interact on very superficial and often competitive levels; but this doesn`t meet our inner needs, so we have to find refuge in a smaller, private world where we can take off our masks, be honest and open about who we really are, and have a chance to become fully known and deeply loved. I would go so far as to say that no person can achieve a full sense of his identity until he has established an interpersonal relationship in which he is "fully known and deeply loved." This need not be marriage-but for most of us, marriage is the best way to achieve it-and deep down, this is the dream we all have of what we want marriage to do for us.
However, intimacy, like every other pearl of great price, has to be paid for. And the price of
intimacy is clear and simple. It is that, in this vital and private relationship, we must take down all our defenses, and make ourselves totally vulnerable. No married couple really knows what marriage at its best can mean until they have done that with each other. Then, and only then, love flows like a healing stream, cleansing and refreshing their personal lives and their jointly shared life.
After a lifetime of seeing the inside of people`s marriages, including my own, I would have to say reluctantly that most marriages never reach this goal. All strive for it, but few find it. Why is this?
The answer-you guessed it!-is because anger blocks the way. Let me now try to explain how this happens.
We need to consider briefly just what anger is, and the role it plays in our lives. I can only touch on this very superficially.
Most of the literature about anger is based on widely accepted psychological and sociological theories about hostility and aggression. I prefer to begin with a physiological approach. I see anger as a complex series of body changes triggered off by a sudden awareness of danger. This reaction to stress can be regarded as our survival kit, shared in some measure with all living creatures.
All of us live, to some extent, in danger. At any moment an unforeseen catastrophe could overtake us. If this happened, the way in which we responded might determine whether or not we survived. In such a situation, we would need two vital resources-first, an immediate surge of energy; and second, the necessary control of our actions to use that energy to good purpose.
The first need is met by the onset of anger. The way in which our bodies provide "instant energy" is an amazing process. As soon as a warning is received, with remarkable speed, a complex series of bodily changes takes place. The heartbeat speeds up, blood pressure rises, muscles become tense, adrenaline-like substances pour out into the bloodstream, and anticoagulants are withdrawn. These and other changes make us ready for either fight or flight-the two classical ways of responding to an attack.
How is the alarm signal given? Awareness of danger can be activated in a number of ways, through our five senses. It is hardly possible, however, that the first alarm could be dealt with by our reasoning, conscious minds-there just wouldn`t be time to analyze the nature of the stimulus and to decide whether or not it was one which called for an anger reaction. So it is logical to conclude that, despite the teaching of some modern cults, we do not make ourselves angry, and are not responsible for being in a state of anger.
This is important. Many people feel ashamed and guilty about being angry, and try to deny their own feelings. I believe that anger is a natural, healthy emotional state, and should be accepted as such. Rightly used, anger could save our lives. Short of that, it can provide the motivation for personal and social action that could change all our lives for the better. Let us therefore affirm our anger, and be thankful for it.
However, once the anger is there, it must be rightly used. If you are confronted by someone who has designs on your life, you must fight, and you had better use all your cunning and skill so that you have a good chance of winning. Or, if the best course seems to be to run for it, you had better run in the right direction, so that you don`t land in a dead end or find your escape cut off by an accomplice of your attacker.
So you are not responsible for your anger being there-that is beyond the scope of your conscious mind; but you are responsible for what you do with the anger, as soon as you are consciously aware of it. In other words, you are capable of controlling your anger, so that you may use it effectively. As the Bible so well puts it, "Be angry, and sin not." Being angry is not sinful, but misusing anger can he sinful.
By this time you may be saying, "What`s all this talk about danger and survival, about a crisis in which your life is threatened? Surely we are not talking about life-and-death issues? We know that some married couples lose control and batter each other; but we are thinking of responsible Christian husbands and wives."
What we must understand is that, in marriage, people live very close to each other, and share their lives deeply. Yet as individuals they have differences of opinions-quite strong differences. And because of their closeness and dependence on each other, these differences easily become disagreements, and the disagreements in turn produce anger. Wanting to have your own way, and then being thwarted by your marriage partner, develops frustrations, and frustration is as much a state of crisis as fear is. We all know about the difficulty of doing heart transplants, because the body`s defense system responds by trying to destroy the transplanted organ, treating it as an invader. Similarly, the body`s system will equally respond with anger to a disagreement with a person who is otherwise deeply loved. The body has no power to judge the seriousness, or otherwise, of the situation. It simply responds with a surge of energy to any incident that heightens emotional tension.
When you experience a surge of anger, you have a choice of three ways in which you can deal with it.
The first is to vent it, in the form of physical action. This is the most natural response, because one of the physiological conditions that anger brings about is muscular tension, and by using
the muscles, as in fighting or running, the tension is somewhat relieved. What this means is that you begin to expand the energy supply your body has provided. However, when people speak about getting rid of their anger by "venting it," this is not really accurate; because drawing on the energy supply is actually a message to your body to keep the anger coming.
Another way of dealing with anger is to suppress it. Because we have the power to control how anger is used, we may choose not to use it at all. There are life situations where this is obviously the sensible thing to do. If your boss bawls you out, and you have a strong urge to respond by punching his nose, your superior wisdom tells you that this might lead to a chain of very inconvenient consequences, and you had better not do It.
Many smaller creatures, in a danger situation, respond neither by fight nor by flight-they freeze. They may "play dead" in the hope that no attack will be made. And we also have the capacity to respond to anger by suppressing action altogether.
What happens when we do this? Does it "go away"? It does in time, because the body has no wish to remain in a state of internal crisis, and it welcomes a signal to return to a relaxed condition. However, if the stimulus that caused the anger is still there, it isn`t easy to turn off the head of steam. What occurs, when this happens again and again, is that the body establishes a state of continuing low-key tension, a kind of slow, simmering anger that never entirely goes away. We often call this resentment. It is a very unhealthy state to be in, and it lies at the root of many psychosomatic illnesses.
This "bottling up" of anger is particularly harmful in the marriage relationship. Anger and love are in fact mutually exclusive emotions. When you are angry you can`t be loving, especially toward the source of your anger. However, when a fight takes place, the couple may expend some of their anger on each other, make up, and be warm and affectionate again. Many marriages work on that yo-yo principle.
However, when anger is bottled up and becomes resentment, there is a continuing state of hostility between the two people, and this is all the more difficult to deal with if it is not openly acknowledged. It forces these people to keep at a distance from each other, because there is no "making up" experience. As a marriage counselor, over a period of many years, I have noticed that couples who habitually suppress their anger toward each other become incapable of tenderness. The inner core of love between them withers away; and although they may go through the motions of being affectionate, it is not genuine. This is the tragic price they pay. Many counselors believe that even if venting anger is not appropriate in a loving relationship, bottling it up is even worse.
What then are couples to do? If venting anger is damaging to love and intimacy, and suppressing anger is even more damaging, they seem to be confronted by a choice of two evils. Large numbers of husbands and wives live most of their lives in this predicament.
Fortunately, there is a way out, although it is known to very few couples; and these few seem to have stumbled on it by some lucky chance. This is just not good enough. Even in the marriage enrichment movement, I have encountered well meaning couples who talk about learning the art of marital fighting, or of suppressing their negative feelings toward each other.
In my own marriage, our discovery that our anger could be dissolved came about almost by accident. We had found the other two approaches quite unsatisfactory, and we were looking for a better solution. I need not recount a long and discouraging process. It will be enough to describe the solution that finally emerged. It took the form of what we call a three-step system, which we mutually adopted by making appropriate contracts with each other.
The first step was to recognize openly that anger, in marriage as anywhere else, is a healthy emotion, and that it is not in our power to prevent it. We therefore freely gave each other the right to be angry with each other, without any judgments or penalties. However, we agreed that when one of us did get angry with the other, we would communicate this as soon as possible. We recognized that it should be acceptable to say "I am feeling angry" as to say "I am feeling sad" or "I am feeling hungry." All these are bodily states which a caring partner should be able to understand.
However, we drew a clear line between acknowledging anger and venting anger. This enabled us to take our second step, which was a commitment on both sides that we would never again attack each other, because we took the view that this was entirely inappropriate between two people who were trying to establish a loving and intimate relationship.
The assurance that there would be no attack made it unnecessary for the other partner to go on the defensive and to develop retaliatory anger. Instead, we tried to develop a compassionate concern, rather than a sense of hostility, toward the angry partner; and to communicate our desire to understand how and why the state of anger had arisen.
The third step developed naturally from this. Acknowledging anger, and promising not to vent it, doesn`t take away the negative emotions. The anger is still there, and it will not be healthily cleared up until the stimulus that caused it has been faced, understood, and removed.
In order to do this, we had to accept the fact that the state of anger in one partner, evoked by the other, is an integral part of our total relationship, and that we both have an equal responsibility to clear it up. I know that this directly challenges the frequent assertion that my anger is mine alone, and that I must be responsible for dealing with it. We found that this simply does not work in an intimate relationship. Only when we clearly saw that anger, on either side, is a barrier between us, which must be removed by both of us acting together, did we find the answer. If you have made me angry, I cannot clear up the situation completely without your active sharing in the process. I readily admit that it isn`t practicable to clear up anger toward more distant people in this way; although I think we would be creating a wonderful world if this could actually be done. However, in an intimate relationship, I am convinced that unless it is done, the relationship will inevitably be damaged, and if this continues to happen, the damage will be progressive. This underlines my conviction that the failure to deal realistically with every anger situation as it arises is the major cause of failure in modern marriages.
What do I mean by "dealing realistically with an anger situation"? We must remember that anger is not a primary, but a secondary emotion. It is the body`s response to another kind of stimulus that usually takes the form of fear or frustration. Anger is a spontaneous response to a situation in which my sense of security is threatened, my self-esteem damaged, my feelings hurt. In such a situation, the last thing I really want is to get into a fight. My real need is to be understood, loved, and supported. As someone once said of teenagers, the time when they need love most is the time when they seem most unlovable.
The approach is therefore: "I find myself getting angry with you. But you know I am pledged not to attack you, which would only make you angry, too, and alienate us both. What I need is your help to get behind my anger to what is really causing it, so that we can do something about it together." The response of this is: "I don`t like your being angry with me, but I don`t blame you for it. And since I know you are not going to attack me, I needn`t put up my defenses and get
angry with you in turn. I appreciate your invitation to help you get through to the underlying cause of your anger, because I care about our relationship, and it should help both of us to find out what is really happening to us."
Of course this must be followed up by a session in which the situation which produced the anger is carefully examined. And this must be done in an atmosphere of openness and honesty, with all the relevant facts and feelings shared. If the anger is still too hot to handle, it may be necessary to wait. But postponement must not become evasion. Every anger situation must be worked through as soon as possible. If this is not done, each new situation will gather up previously unsettled ones, and build up to a level of tension in which anger is likely to be so intense that it gets out of control.
What in fact happens when anger situations in marriage are faced together in this way? Years of experience have clearly shown my wife and me that careful examination always reveals one of two situations. Either it turns out that my anger was based on misinterpretation of her words or deeds; in which case we must improve our communication system so that I am less likely in the future to misinterpret her behavior, or on the other hand it turns out that she pushed me beyond the limits of my tolerance at that particular time, in which case we must find a way to improve her understanding of my sensitivity to her words and actions, and at the same time help me to widen the limits of my tolerance to sensitive issues that I have to learn to live with. In other words, the anger situation has been used to promote a growth experience for both of us.
I cannot deny that this is a complex process, and it is simply not likely, as I have already said, to be stumbled upon accidentally by any but a few exceptionally fortunate couples. I am also aware that some couples are not even seeking a relationship of loving intimacy, and therefore would not be motivated to pay the price that has to be paid for it. I have to admit also that the initial task of changing over to this new approach from a fighting pattern or a suppressing pattern is a major undertaking, because you have to begin with a formidable backlog of unresolved conflicts. I can only say, however, that when a marriage is finally freed of the damage that anger can do to it, either by violent upheaval or by slow corrosion, it is like passing through a sound barrier into a new atmosphere of ongoing growth and creative love which has to be experienced to be believed. This is what we call "dissolving" anger, using it creatively; and I am speaking from actual experience.
Let me conclude with three further comments:
I believe that the creative handling of anger is the key, and the only key, to the achievement of genuine and lasting love and intimacy in a close relationship. All other methods of dealing with interpersonal conflict, which arises inevitably in close relationships, are superficial solutions, and leave the roots of conflict undisturbed, so that they are likely to reappear later. Love and intimacy in their full meaning are simply not attainable in a relationship in which conflict is avoided and anger suppressed. The inevitable anger developed in a love relationship must be used positively as raw material for ongoing growth. The onset of anger is very like a squeaking noise in the motor of your automobile. Use it as a warning, and deal with the cause of the trouble, and the performance of your car will be improved. Ignore it, and the car`s performance will sooner or later deteriorate.
I believe that this is a vital message for Christians, because Christianity alone, among the world`s religions, puts the central emphasis on love-the love of God revealed in the life of love that Jesus lived, and the promise that this divine love can bring forth a corresponding quality of love in our hearts and our homes. We constantly give lip service to these concepts; but we simply do not teach Christian families in practical terms how it can be done; so many of them suffer from frustration, guilt, and shame because they know well that their family life is not reflecting their Christian beliefs, but all their efforts to do better seem to be ineffective.
Finally, I have to make it clear that what I have been saying applies primarily to the companionship marriage and the companionship family. In the traditional (that is, the hierarchical one) marriage, anger caused little trouble as long as it didn`t lead to extreme violence. It was considered entirely appropriate for a husband to be angry with his wife. Indeed, if he stamped and bellowed he was supposed to be exhibiting his masculine strength and showing that he was the master in his own home. The wife, on the other hand, was not expected to show anger, but to behave with the yielding sweetness and the passive acquiescence which were considered to be the feminine virtues. By this ingenious arrangement, open conflict in marriage was neatly avoided. Of course it didn`t always work; and in any case, it made loving intimacy completely impossible.
There is no evidence that I have ever encountered that a woman confronted with a corresponding stimulus, generates less anger than a man does. The acquiescence of those traditional wives was entirely the result of social conditioning, which led to the repression of the wife`s normal and healthy anger.
The advent of the companionship marriage has given husbands and wives equal opportunities to express their feelings, and this has resulted in marital conflict on a hitherto unprecedented scale. There are some who feel that the Christian answer is to go back to the traditional marriage. I do not share this view. The full, rich quality of love in a marriage cannot be released until we respond to the great commandment of Jesus to love your neighbor as you love yourself. We don`t yet live in a world where we can very easily treat the people next door in this Christian spirit. But after all, who is the nearest of all your neighbors? Surely it is the person with whom you have entered, by the most solemn vows, into a life deeply shared. That, for me, represents the clear and central and final Christian message about marriage, in response to words to which Jesus Himself gave the seal of final authority, and which we call the "Great Commandment." It seems tragic to me that we should go on structuring marriage so that it falls short of the fullness of relational love and intimacy, simply because we cannot deal with the inevitable anger that develops in a close relationship, by transforming it into a means of mutual growth.
Anger will inevitably develop in Christian families as in all others. This does not mean that it is to be treated as shameful or wicked. It is a vital part of our biological heritage. Venting it, or suppressing it, are both ineffective ways of dealing with it. There is, however, a more excellent way-to heed the message it is trying to make us hear, and respond by dealing with the situation that has caused the anger, and using it constructively as a means of continuing growth toward our goals of love and intimacy.
I believe that this is a vital message for all families in our world today, and especially for Christian families. Everything else we do to try to help families, is, by comparison, scratching the surface. Only by going right to the inner core of our intimate relationships, and learning how to resolve what I call the love-anger cycle, shall we release the power to make family living warm, loving, and tender. And when we can do this for families, they should he able to do just about everything else for themselves.
