Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

by Harriet Lerner

  She submits to unfair circumstances.

  She does not feel in control of her life.

  She has not effectively addressed the real issues at hand.

  She is unclear about her own contribution to her dilemma.

  She sacrifices her own growth to bolster and protect her husband.

  She preserves the status quo in her marriage at the expense of her own self.

  She avoids testing how much flexibility her marriage has to tolerate change on her part.

  She feels helpless and powerless.

  She turns anger into tears.

  She gets a headache.

  She does not like herself.

  She believes that she behaves badly.

  Are any of the above unfamiliar to you? Probably not. One or all of these things happen to us when we engage in ineffective fighting and blaming or when we are afraid to fight at all.

  Unlike some women who dare not differ with their husbands, or lovers, Barbara has no problem getting angry. Her problem is that she fights in a manner that ensures that change will not occur and she protects her husband and the status quo of their relationship at the expense of her own growth. Carry on as she may, Barbara does not challenge the basic rule in the relationship—that her husband makes the rules. She “de-selfs” herself for her man.

  What is “de-selfing?” Obviously, we do not always get our way in a relationship or do everything that we would like to do. When two people live under the same roof, differences inevitably arise which require compromise, negotiation, and give and take. If Barbara’s husband was upset about the workshop, and if the workshop was not really that important to her, she might have decided to forget it. This in itself would not necessarily be a problem for her.

  The problem occurs when one person—often a wife—does more giving in and going along than is her share and does not have a sense of clarity about her decisions and control over her choices. De-selfing means that too much of one’s self (including one’s thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is “negotiable” under pressures from the relationship. Even when the person doing the most compromising of self is not aware of it, de-selfing takes its inevitable toll. The partner who is doing the most sacrificing of self stores up the most repressed anger and is especially vulnerable to becoming depressed and developing other emotional problems. She (and in some cases he) may end up in a therapist’s office, or even in a medical or psychiatric hospital, saying, “What is wrong with me?” rather than asking, “What is wrong with this relationship?” Or she may express her anger, but at inappropriate times, over petty issues, in a manner that may invite others simply to ignore her or to view her as irrational or sick.

  A form of de-selfing, common to women, is called “underfunctioning.” The “underfunctioning-overfunctioning” pattern is a familiar one in couples. How does it work? Research in marital systems has demonstrated that when women and men pair up, and stay paired up, they are usually at the same level of “independence,” or emotional maturity. Like a seesaw, it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other.

  A wife, for example, may become increasingly entrenched in the role of the weak, vulnerable, dependent, or otherwise dysfunctional partner. Her husband, to the same degree, may disown and deny these qualities in himself. He may begin to direct the bulk of his emotional energy toward reacting to his spouse’s problems, rather than identifying and sharing his own. Underfunctioners and overfunctioners provoke and reinforce each other’s behavior, so that the seesaw becomes increasingly hard to balance over time. The more the man avoids sharing his own weaknesses, neediness, and vulnerability, the more his woman may experience and express more than her share. The more the woman avoids showing her competence and strength, the more her man will have an inflated sense of his own. And if the underfunctioning partner starts looking better, the overfunctioning partner will start looking worse.

  My brief telephone conversation with Barbara suggests that she is the underfunctioner in her marriage. Of course, not all women sit on the bottom of the seesaw in their relationships. In real life, there are any number of happy and unhappy arrangements. A man may sit on the bottom of the seesaw, or a couple may keep the seesaw moving over time, or each partner may compete with the other for the more helpless, one-down position.

  What is important is that being at the bottom of the seesaw relationship is culturally prescribed for women. While individual women may defy or even reverse the prescription, it in fact underlies our very definitions of “femininity” and the whole ethos of male dominance. Women are actively taught to cultivate and express all those qualities that men fear in themselves and do not wish to be “weakened” by. And, of course, cultural teachings that discourage us from competing with men or expressing anger at them are paradoxical warnings of how hurtful and destructive the “weaker sex” might be to men if we were simply to be ourselves!

  Sure enough, those old dictates to “play dumb,” “let the man win,” or “pretend he’s boss”—are out of vogue. But their message still remains a guiding rule that lurks in the unconscious of countless women: The weaker sex must protect the stronger sex from recognizing the strength of the weaker sex lest the stronger sex feel weakened by the strength of the weaker sex. We learn to act weaker to help men feel stronger and to strengthen men by relinquishing our own strength.

  Underfunctioning can take any number of forms. It may be as subtle as a wife’s turning down a job opportunity or avoiding a new challenge when her husband gives a covert communication that he would prefer things to remain as they are or when she fears he would feel threatened by such a change. A woman may protect her man by confining herself to work that he prefers not to do and by failing to recognize and develop interests and skills in “his” areas. She may, in the process, acquire emotional or physical problems. Underlying her various complaints lurks the unconscious conviction that she must remain in a position of relative weakness for her most important relationship to survive. If the woman is further convinced that she herself cannot survive without the relationship, she will—like Barbara—vent her anger in a manner that only reinforces the old familiar patterns from which her anger stems.

  INEFFECTIVE BLAMING VERSUS ASSERTIVE CLAIMING

  How does fighting and blaming actually serve to block rather than facilitate change? Let’s analyze Barbara’s situation more closely. To begin with, Barbara participated in a dead-end battle about going to the workshop and used her anger energy to try to make her husband see things her way. There are two problems with her efforts to change her husband’s mind: First, he has as much right to his opinions and speculations about the workshop as she has to hers. Second, it is hardly likely that she is going to succeed in this venture. She may know from past experience that this particular workshop is just the thing that her husband would say no to. As she said in her phone call, “I’m sure the workshop is worth the money, but I couldn’t convince him of that. ‘No’ was his final word.”

  By engaging in a battle that she could only lose, she failed to exercise the power that she really did have—the power to take charge of her own self. Barbara would have taken a significant step out of her de-selfed position had she clarified her own priorities and taken action on her own behalf. She might have refused to fight entirely and instead said to her husband, “Good or bad, radical or not, the workshop is important to me. If I cancel my registration because you want me to, I will end up feeling angry and resentful. I look forward to the workshop and I plan to go.”

  What prevented Barbara from moving from ineffective fighting and complaining to clear and assertive claiming? Perhaps she feared paying a very high price for this move. Many of us who fight ineffectively, like those of us who don’t fight at all, have an unconscious belief that the other person would have a very hard time if we were clear and strong. Our anxiety and guilt about the potential loss of a relationship may make it difficult for us to change in the first place—and then to stay on cours
e when our partner reacts strongly to our new and different behavior.

  Making Changes—Taking Chances

  What if Barbara did something different and clarified a new position with her husband? What if she approached him at a time when he would be most receptive to hearing her and stated her position firmly and calmly without anger or tears? For instance: “I know that you don’t think the workshop is worth the money and I appreciate that this is your opinion. However, I’m a grown woman and I need to make my own decisions. I don’t expect you to approve of the workshop or to be happy about my going, but I do need to make this decision for myself.”

  Let us imagine that Barbara could stand firm on the real issue here (“I will make my own decisions”) and avoid getting sidetracked into arguing other points, such as the value of the workshop or my character and credentials. Let us suppose that without fighting, blaming, accusing, or trying to change her husband’s mind, she simply held to her statement of what she wanted to do: “Right or wrong, good or bad, I need to make this choice for myself.”

  What next? What would happen to this couple if Barbara challenged the status quo by calmly asserting her decision to attend the workshop? What would her husband’s next move be? Would he draw the line and say, “If you go, I’ll leave you?” Would he say nothing but then hit the bottle, have an affair, or become abusive in some way? Would he respond more mildly and become grouchy or depressed for several days?

  Of course, we don’t have the slightest idea. We know little about this couple. One thing, however, is certain: Whenever one person makes a move to rebalance the seesaw, there is a countermove by the other party. If Barbara behaved in this new way, her husband would make some “Change back!” maneuver as an attempt to reduce his own anxiety and reinstate the old familiar patterns of fighting. Such a maneuver would occur not because he no longer loved his wife or because he was intimidated by this particular workshop, but because he felt threatened by the new level of assertiveness, separateness, and maturity that Barbara was demonstrating.

  Barbara’s new position would have implications far beyond the question of her attendance at an anger workshop. It would be a statement that it is her responsibility, not his, to make decisions about what she will and will not do. In calmly and firmly clarifying this important issue in the relationship, she would no longer be the same woman whom he married and with whom he feels comfortable and secure. She, too, would be feeling very anxious and uncertain if she behaved in this new and different way. There are few things more anxiety-arousing than shifting to a higher level of self-assertion and separateness in an important relationship and maintaining this position despite the countermoves of the other person.

  If Barbara gives up her fantasy that she can change her husband and starts using that same anger energy to clarify her choices and take new actions on her own behalf, she will be less troubled by the “anger problems” that spring from her de-selfed or underfunctioning position: headaches, low self-esteem, and chronic bitterness and dissatisfaction, to name just a few. The price she will pay is that her marriage, at least for a while, will likely be rougher than ever. Underlying issues and conflicts will begin to surface. She may start asking herself some serious questions: “Who is responsible for making decisions about my life?” “How are power and decision-making shared in this relationship?” “What will happen in my marriage if I become stronger and more assertive?” “If my choice is either to sacrifice myself to keep the marriage calm, or to grow and risk losing the relationship, which do I want?”

  Perhaps Barbara is not ready to be struggling with such threatening issues at this time. Perhaps she would get very little support in such a venture. Perhaps she believes that any relationship is better than no relationship at all. For all we know, she herself is scared to attend the workshop and is unconsciously inviting her husband to express all the negative feelings for both of them.

  It is important to appreciate that there are real dangers here. If Barbara was to stand firm about the workshop, she would inevitably feel an internal pressure to take a stand on other issues as well. Whereas in the past she and her husband may have fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, she would now be in the process of changing her shape. Would he change along with her so that they could continue to fit together, or would he eventually leave her? Would she, while making her own changes, decide that she needed to leave him? At least for now, Barbara has made her choice to protect her husband and continue in the old ways. It is not simply an act of “passive submission”; rather, it may well be an active choice to safeguard the predictable familiarity and security of her most important relationship—her marriage.

  PEACE AT ANY PRICE

  In a certain way, Barbara is not so “unliberated” as she may seem. She is able to express ideas and opinions that are different from her husband’s. She can recognize that what she wants for herself is not the same as what her husband wants for her. She also knows her priorities. She would prefer, at least in this instance, to accommodate to her husband’s wishes rather than risk rocking the marital boat.

  Many of us make such choices without being consciously aware of what we are doing and why we are doing it. We do not allow our own selves to know that we would like to attend a workshop on anger. We avoid entertaining new ideas and ways of thinking that would lead to overt conflict and disagreement in our relationships with important others. We may not allow ourselves to identify the unfair arrangements in which we participate. We may also cancel our registration to things new and different, but we may be unaware of the sacrifices we make to keep things on an even keel and ensure that peace reigns.

  How might such a peace-keeper have handled the workshop situation? Most likely, she would not have struggled with her partner, because there would have been nothing to fight about. She would not have considered attending an anger workshop in the first place. She would not allow herself to become seriously interested in anything that would threaten another person or disrupt the status quo in an important relationship. If she did allow herself some initial interest in the workshop, she might test out her partner’s reaction before she signed up. She might approach him and say, “Listen, I’m thinking about attending this workshop. . . .” And then she would sensitively evaluate his spoken and unspoken response. If she picked up any signals that he felt threatened or was disapproving, she would move in quickly to protect him. She might say to herself, “Well, the workshop probably wouldn’t be that good,” or, “We don’t have the money now,” or, “I’m not really in the mood to go, anyway.”

  In this way, a woman avoids conflict by defining her own wishes and preferences as being the same as what her partner wishes and prefers her to be. She defines her own self as he defines her. She sacrifices her awareness of who she is in her efforts to conform to his wants and expectations. The entire de-selfing process goes on unconsciously so that she may experience herself in perfect harmony with her husband. If she develops emotional or physical problems, she may not associate her dysfunction with the self-sacrifices that she has made in order to protect another person or keep a relationship calm.

  In a somewhat less extreme position is the woman who would be able to maintain her interest in the workshop despite the risk of recognizing that she and her partner were not of one mind. She would allow herself to be aware that she is a separate and different person from him, with ideas and preferences no less deserving of respect than his. Nonetheless, she might still find a way to avoid bringing differences between her and her partner into bold relief and incurring his disapproval. She might say to herself, “Well, I do want to go to the workshop, but I can tell there’s going to be a big hassle if I push it and it’s not worth the fight.” “It’s not worth the fight” is a familiar phrase that protects many of us from confronting the challenge of changing our behavior. As Barbara’s situation illustrates, fighting per se is not the issue. What matters is the degree to which we are able to take a clear position in a relationship and behave in ways that are co
ngruent with our stated beliefs.

  Women who fall into the peace-maker or “nice lady” category are by no means passive, wishy-washy losers. Quite to the contrary, we have developed an important and complex interpersonal skill that requires a great deal of inner activity and sensitivity. We are good at anticipating other people’s reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. This is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. If only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our own selves.

  SEPARATION AND TOGETHERNESS

  Making a long-term relationship work is a difficult business because it requires the capacity to strike a balance between individualism (the “I”) and togetherness (the “we”). The tugs in both directions are very strong. On the one hand, we want to be separate, independent individuals—self-contained persons in our own right; on the other, we seek a sense of connectedness and intimacy with another person, as well as a sense of belongingness to a family or a group. When a couple gets out of balance in either direction, there is a problem.

  What happens if there is not enough “we” in our relationship? The result may be a case of “emotional divorce.” Two people can end up isolated and alone in an empty-shell marriage where they do not share personal feelings and experiences. When the “separateness force” is overriding, an “I-don’t-need-you” attitude may be expressed by one or both partners—a stance that is a far cry from a truly autonomous position. There may be little fighting in the relationship, but little closeness as well.