You know, when they lash out at you and get angry with you for reasons that you cannot explain?

Much of the time, you simply don’t know where your partner is coming from. Everything was perfect until you got married. How can this happen? Have you made a terrible mistake?

In short, No.

This is just another area where we receive very little if any training or education. In school we are taught calculus and linear equations, but no one bothers to tell us how an intimate relationship is supposed to work or what to expect.

This one single fact is a large contributor to our extremely high divorce rate. Read this article from Melody Brooke to get a little insight into what’s really going on when your partner lashes out at you…

A Quick Course in Pre-Marital Education

Did you know that, now, in Texas, when you obtain a marriage license you will be given a premarital education handbook and encouraged to attend a premarital education course?  Texas legislation has implemented this as an attempt to intervene with the increasing divorce rate.   

The truth is that most of us know more about what’s on TV than we do about how to manage a healthy, intimate relationship.  I know I was certainly clueless about it. Which is undoubtedly why I ended up divorced twice.  I had no clue what marriage really was and how to go about achieving success in the most important area of my life.  I suspect most newlyweds are like I was, naive and full of fantasies with nothing to solidify my dreams.   

In order to make sense of what I was experiencing when I married I did what I had learned through nature and nurture: I blamed him.  After all, he was the source of my misery.  Certainly if he just straightened up and did right my happiness would be achieved.  But of course, the reality is that I had no idea what it was I really wanted from him, or how to go about getting it from him.  I didn’t understand what I wanted; let alone what it would take to get him to do it!  Blaming him was much easier than figuring all that out.   

Blame is a survival mechanism.  When we can figure out whom or what to blame then we can come up with a strategy to survive.  Blame is a brain function.  Our old brain, the part of us that drives our survival has simplistic views of our world and of ourselves.  It is not complicated by our cognitions.  For this part of our brain, something is either good or bad, threatening or safe, there is no in between.  By categorizing our partner into the category of our enemy we can easily determine what we should do for our survival.  We then strategize on how to overcome our enemy.   

Of course, this is not terribly conducive to retaining an intimate connection! So what can we do to overcome this innate programming? How can we turn our enemy back into our lover?   

The key is to understand that our old brain is operating on false premises.  Our old brain thinks that our partner really is threatening our life, and that we are in real physical danger.  Except in the case of physically abusive relationships, this is not true.  When we recognize that we have a choice about how we view our partner, we can make different choices.   

What I have learned over the past 10 years is that when my partner acts out in anger he is hurting.  Wow, what a concept.  They are actually in pain or afraid, which is why they lash out.  If I had known this one simple thing, I might not have had to get divorced once, let alone twice.   

I was so anger phobic that when my partner became angry I went into a defensive position myself and lost complete connection with where my partner was coming from.  I couldn’t hear what he had to say or understand his pain.   

This is what we do, we move into what I call a Self –Protector role and become defensive, putting up walls between our partner and ourselves. These walls dissolve our sense of connection with our partner. When we lose our sense of connection with our partner we no longer care about the impact of what we say or do on them.  Our only concern becomes our own survival (survival of our well being at least) and we no longer experience any empathy or concern for our partner.  

When this happens it spells disaster for the marriage. 

…

Related articles:

1. How to Tell Your Partner Anything and Live to Tell About It
2. Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Partner?
3. Relationship Problem – Fighting Like Wild Animals?
4. Sex, What’s That? I’m Married!
5. Do You Know Why Your Partner is Pushing You Away?

During the 4 months we have been seeing each other I’ve kept it a secret that I have anger issues from a head injury I got a couple of years ago. This injury left me with small lesions that affected my mood, memory, and some motor and thinking skills. Even though I’ve been through therapy for it and have gotten somewhat better, I hate telling girls, or anyone else, because I don’t want to use it as a crutch or a sympathy card.

I got so worried after tonight that she was seriously going to dump me that I sent her an email telling her of my ailment. The last girl I dated and told her about it kinda disappeared, so I’m a bit scared what she will do because I really like this girl. I just couldn’t let her keep thinking that I’m a jerk when my anger is only so much in my control.

Should I have told her about the lesions and how they affect me or should I have kept my mouth shut? 

The Answer:

Whether you should have told her or not doesn’t really matter since you already told her. What’s done is done. As a rule I never regret absolutely anything. You can choose to learn from all your choices and experiences and do something different next time, but stay away from regret and self doubt. They only hurt you and lead to uncertainty, which leads to more regrets.

But keep this in mind for the future… You should always talk about a serious or emotional topic in person, never on the phone or via email. In an emotional situation like this, if you really need to get it off your chest, type up that email and then save it in draft or delete it all together. You’ll feel better and will still have the opportunity to let things cool and have a calm chat in person.

From my perspective, full disclosure is a must if you’re considering a long term committed relationship with someone. Otherwise, secrets (small or large) seem to create a heaviness over the relationship because you’re always wondering if the other person will find out. Most likely, your partner will find out anyway because secrets have a way of coming out eventually.

It is however a good idea to wait to share certain intimate details until it looks like the relationship is actually going somewhere. Picture going on a first date with someone and you both go through a laundry list of countless little things that "the other person should know". Most of those are completely irrelevant if you don’t build a relationship. Unless you have a firm foundation and you truly want to be together, none of that stuff really matters… and it could torpedo your chances of getting to know each other.

Regardless of any disability, she was attracted to the person you are today, and the person you’ve been for those four months. Period.

Your best chance to salvage the relationship and keep her is to confront the anger problem aggressively. Start a new anger management therapy program, or whatever else you think will work, and include her. But definitely take action to make it better. That way she’ll see that you truly care for her and you’re serious about making her happy and being with her.

Related articles:

1. First Serious Relationship… Should We Date Other People?
2. Revealing New Online Dating Book…
3. How to Spice Up Your Sex Life and Save Your Relationship
4. Friends After Break Up… Why Won’t He Return My Calls?
5. Long Distance Relationships – Can They Really Work?