My Open Letter:Dealing with Anger After a Break up.
Sam caught his wife cheating with his best friend. It was an excruciating experience and even though he felt terribly betrayed, he decided to stay and try to forgive and trust her again. After all, they have a daughter of 4 years and he didn’t want her to suffer for her parents faults.
But Sam’s biggest problems have always been jealousy and distrust. This became ever worse after the infidelity of his wife.
8 months after the incident Sam’s wife decided to get divorced – allegedly she couldn’t bear his distrust and need for control any longer.
Needless to say that Sam was devastated. After her misbehavior, it was him who had desperately tried to keep their marriage going, despite the fact that he had every reason to go. Now she was leaving?
“She left without giving me a chance. This isn’t fair. First she humiliates me then she leaves. I won’t let her do this to me. I swear she will never have a happy day with our daughter again!”
After that Sam felt extreme anger, even hate, which manifested mainly in physical complaints.
Sam’s story is an example of how break ups can lead to anger and hate towards the one who leaves. The break ups or divorces are sometimes more extreme, sometimes less, but the anger is almost always present.
When experiencing a break up or divorceyou have to go through the 4 phases. The anger is typical for the 2nd phase.
Dealing with anger is not that easy and it can do real damage.
Still thinking of your Ex? how long it will take to move on… and how you can speed up the process.
How do you know that you are consumed by anger?
This isn’t always as obvious as you might think.
Anger may manifest itself in many different ways, so that you might not even realize that you are under its spell. You might only feel anxiety and strain.
Here are some questions which might help you to evaluate if you are dealing with anger:
Are you occupied by thinking how you could get back at your partner?Do you often think how could s/he do this to you?Do you sometimes imagine that you should kill yourself so that s/he gets feelings of guilt?Do you badmouth your Ex in front of friends/colleagues?Do you give your Ex the fault alone that your relationship failed?Do you wish him/her failures in their future lives?
If you can answer most of the questions with “yes” then you are definitely dealing with anger.
Anger is a bad thing for you
First you have to realize that you alone create your anger and no one else. It’s not coming from the outside – it comes from inside.
This is a very important concept to realize. Only then can you do something to change it.
All your thoughts of hate and revenge create your discomfort. Every time you are blaming your Ex and thinking about ways to harm him/her and to pay them back, you are in reality creating your anger and hate.
THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO IS TO KEEP THAT ANGER INSIDE OF YOU.
The next very important fact to realize is that anger can be very harmful to you if unexpressed. It can manifest itself in illness and mental disorders.
Where does anger come from?
You feel anger any time that something extremely important in your life doesn’t turn out the way you want and expect it. People who are in our eyes responsible for this failure are a threat to us, an aggression.
This is in fact early cave man behavior. It’s hardwired into us from the beginning of mankind. In order to survive, Early Man needed physical tension to be able to escape or fight.
Today you don’t have to be afraid of getting eaten by a tiger, so the reasons for anger now must lie somewhere else.
Why we feel anger today
Today our anger is only an indication of our discomfort with ourselves, a sign that we don’t think highly about ourselves.
The fact that our Ex left us has highly damaged our self-esteem. We sometimes think that we are stupid and unattractive. Our self-love is gone.
For all of this we blame our Exes.
The problem behind all this is that we often started the relationship with the belief that we need a partner in order to be happy.
No wonder then that we feel betrayed and angry if that partner leaves us alone.
We have brought ourselves into dependence and the break up therefore feels life-threatening to us.
What to do with our anger?
The worst thing you can do is to keep that anger inside of you. Unexpressed anger will turn into depression, psychosomatic disorders, headaches or gastric ulcer-especially in women.
So we have to express it.
But how? By kicking your Exes ass? I wouldn’t recommend that.
Releasing your anger in front of your Exes will only lead to further problems, especially if you have further obligations like mutual children or work related business together.
So, you’re not supposed to keep your anger inside, neither can you kick your Exes asses. So what the heck can you do?
There are actually some ways to express your anger in different ways, harmless for you and others.
I am going to talk about these ways in my next article: “Dealing with Anger after a Break Up – Part 2“.
See you then.
Until then, please try to resist the urge to hunt down and kill your Ex (as much as you may feel that s/he deserves it).
Your friend,
Sherrymo.
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