The gift of the freedom to feel.
We’ve been married over 22 years now. Like all marriages, we’ve had our good times, and our tough times. Days when everything went perfectly, and others where it seemed that nothing could go right. Through all of this, we’ve tried to maintain a kindness with each other, never resorting to petty vindictiveness or deliberate insults. In 22 years, we’ve never tried to hurt each other.
Yet I realize I have hurt her, by holding something back.
Anger isn’t something my wife handles easily. She might get frustrated quicker than others, but honestly being angry and allowing herself to feel it, and even more to express it, is not a skill that she has mastered.
She’s more likely to hold it in for a long time, and then it comes out in what she calls the ‘ugly cry’, where she’s more likely to be angry with herself for being angry than she is at someone else, especially me.
But part of the reason she struggles is because I don’t make it easy for her to be angry.
Please understand, it’s not that I don’t give her reasons to be angry, far from it. I have more than my fair share of flaws, and they affect her on a daily basis. But because she is my world, and because of some patterns learned in my childhood, her being angry with me is so painful that I tend to close down, and emotionally separate myself from her.
I know it’s a defense mechanism, but it’s not fair to her.
Because there are things that she should be angry about, and things that she needs to tell me about. To make it worse, after 22 years of marriage and because I am kind of a gifted and skilled reader of people, she realizes that even being angry (without expressing it) is hard on me, and so she tries very hard to suppress the natural feelings of frustration that occur in any marriage.
I can’t imagine how hard it is for her being married to me.
So I’m trying to be better about giving her the emotional freedom to be frustrated and angry, without me closing up emotionally. I realize that it will be better for our marriage in the long run if she is free to express her emotions in the way that she wants, without having to constantly worry about how I am going to react to her.
Of course, it would be better if I could reduce the number of things that frustrate her, and I’m definitely trying to do that. :)
But for now, the greatest gift I can give her is the freedom to be herself, and to express her thoughts and feelings in the way that she needs to.
Yes it might be hard for me to hear, but given that I’ve never known her to deliberately try to hurt me, I think I will probably learn more from her moments of anger than she can ever understand.
The greatest gifts we can ever give someone is the freedom to truly be who they are, and feel the way that they feel.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings