Surviving 40+ Years of Marriage Part 3

The ability to exert some control over your emotions is one of the most powerful skills any one person can develop. Think about it, so much of what we do, the decisions we make and the words we speak are always affected by the emotional state we are in at that particular time. The list of emotions varies depending on where you look but for the purposes of keeping things simple I will use only the basic ones in this submission, Joy, Fear, Anger, Sadness and Love. In respect to partnerships and specifically marriage I’d like to focus on “anger”.
Anger can be the most destructive emotion if it is not controlled in some manner because it will lead to behaviours that can hurt your partner in many ways up to and including, in some cases, physically. To illustrate my point think of a whole pie as the 100% control of your actions and then picture a slice of 20% being the part of you that is being annoyed by something or someone. As the argument or negative actions accelerate it is difficult to keep the slice from growing to 40% or 60% and suddenly the “anger” portion is 60% to 40% in control of your actions. At this point logic and common sense deteriorate and the emotion of anger takes over and fireworks generally follow. How can you gain the upper hand on your emotions? One of the ways is for you and your partner to understand “buttons” and then to exercise control over the use of these nasty little things. A button you see, is usually the trigger to losing control of your emotions. For instance if a person lacks self confidence about a particular issue (ie physical appearance) and a discussion develops about another person’s positive personal appearance, a button may have been pushed inadvertently that will cause the anger emotion to rise. Having your partner understand these buttons is important but more so is your ability to know and control them thereby leaving yourself at the helm of self control. As you develop the ability to understand and recognize what these buttons mean you will then to be able to compartmentalize them to another area of your brain so you can deal with any situation calmly and rationally. You will also immediately be in a position of control not only over yourself but over others that cannot deal with their emotions rationally. If a couple explores their personalities to locate these buttons then works to understand them for what they are then half the battle is over. The next step is to work on sidestepping these buttons as they appear in our day to day lives. Once, as a couple, you have command over these two steps you can almost say you have reached utopia. Remember I said almost. To illustrate how this ability works watch two people argue one of which has learned to control his/her emotions. One person is constantly shouting and butting in while the other sits calmly interjecting when appropriate and ceding the conversation to their opponent as required. I’ll bet that at the end of the scrap the calm cool and collected person walks away with the best of the deal even if it’s only lower blood pressure and a positive outlook on life.