Anger Between Spouses
Love and anger cannot coexist together. Anger will always push away love. A person cannot ingest poison and then remain healthy; so, too, a person cannot receive anger and still feel loving toward the angry person.
Negative feelings are always more powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting than positive feelings. One or two negative interactions will easily spoil ten or twenty positive interactions. Anger in the form of criticism, sarcasm, hostility, or cruelty, is a very strong negative emotion. Anger is "love's poison."
It is normal at times to feel irritated with your spouse or other close family member. You may not like how they prepare food, dress, spend money, clean the house, parent, or talk with you. At these moments, you have a choice. You can respond either with patience, kindness and understanding, or with judgment, anger and conflict. If you respond with anger and criticism, you will almost certainly ruin your relationship.
Successful marriages are built with love and respect. Anger and arguing will drive a wedge between you and your partner, making mutual feelings of love and respect impossible. Simply, if you want a loving relationship, keep anger out of your home.
Some people think that arguments between husbands and wives are a necessary part of marriage. This is not true. The goal should be to never express anger, bicker, or get into a serious fight. Nobody wants to get sick. We do many things to avoid falling ill. However, when illness comes, we understand it is a normal part of life. The relationship between a husband and wife is the same. We strive for continual peace and harmony, but we accept the occasional marital conflict.
A healthy person can easily survive the flu, but a weak person cannot. The same is true for your relationship. If it is strong, it will endure the occasional mistake by you or your spouse, even though your goal is an anger-free relationship. If anger, as an unwanted guest, occasionally appears, quickly show it the way out. Make your home a special place filled with love and positive feelings.
What Should a Marriage be Like?
A relationship should be peaceful, fun, romantic, pleasant, and devoid of anger, criticism, hostility, and sarcasm. Realistically, you are likely to have the occasional disagreement or argument with your partner. However, the disagreements should be kept small and quickly set aside. When the disagreement is about a particular issue, and anger has not been mixed in, it is easy to have closure and move-on.
Your relationship is successful when you feel loved and cared for by your partner. You feel that in a time of need your partner will be there with you, and for you. Your partner is loyal, loving, and enjoys your company. Not all moments of the day are filled with romance and song, but you look forward to moments that can be. Many times, you are away from your partner, and you enjoy those times, but you look forward to when you are united again. Together, you work with your partner to build your family, and in many cases, grow your family by giving birth to children, and then, in partnership, you raise them.
King Solomon of biblical fame was the smartest man that ever lived. Many hundreds of years ago he declared, "There is nothing new under the sun." This certainly applies to the age-old human need to live in a family. What is new is the increased effort needed to make living in a family a positive experience for all. For most troubled families, the very first step to relationship success is ejecting anger from within the family's bosom.
Anger will fill the home with hostility and mistrust, and family members will prefer to be anywhere other than home. This is the tragedy caused by anger. Fortunately, the tragedy of anger is preventable.
In Judaism, idolatry is considered one the greatest sins. The Talmud compares an angry person to an idol-worshiper. When a person is angry they forget about G‑d; they forget that G‑d is good. They often lie, they embarrass others, they injure others, and they bear hatred, to name just a few of the many sins that being angry can lead to. Reject anger, and stay calm. Live anger-free, and your personal and relationship life will be quickly on the road to success.
