4 Tips for Controlling Anger Toward Your Partner

Being in a relationship when you have anger issues can be a tense and emotionally draining experience for everyone involved. It is hard for your partner to engage with you honestly when they feel as though they must walk on eggshells for fear of setting you off. You might sincerely wish that you weren’t so easily triggered, but controlling anger is not an innate ability; it is one you must learn and practice.

In relationships and situations where you have outbursts, anger is not the problem. It is how you express your anger and the way you communicate when you’re angry that causes damage. Anger is an emotion that builds up and begs to be vented.

You get hurt when you repress your anger, and your relationship is hurt when you express anger in an uncontrolled way. If you don’t learn to control your anger, you will likely push your relationship to the breaking point and cause trauma for those around you.

Regardless of how you have handled your emotions in the past, you are not a slave to anger. You can get it under control even if it means having to learn new skills and tricks or confronting unresolved trauma and emotional wounds.

Controlling anger is much like taming a wild stallion; while it is dangerous, difficult, and powerful, it is still possible to bring that energy into submission. It might take a long time to master the art of controlling anger, but with your partner on your side, you can enrich the relationship.

Going Deep to Address Anger

Controlling anger is easier when you understand how your brain works and what triggers your emotions. People struggle to control their anger because a certain part of their brain has responded to a trigger faster than the logical part of their brain can act to stop it.

It is like riding that untamed stallion without any reins. In a relationship, you will face unhealed wounds, insecurities, stresses, or attachment issues that trigger the alarm system in your brain, resulting in angry outbursts.

Anger is often a defense against more vulnerable feelings like hurt, loneliness, shame, or fear. It acts like a boundary signal whenever someone comes dangerously close to one of these tender places.

When your partner does or says something that makes you question your worth in the relationship, or if it feels like they might abandon you, anger rises to the surface to protect you from these vulnerable, complex emotions. Picture a child running into traffic only to be saved by their parent. In the moment, the parent is furious with the child, but mostly because they were terrified for the child’s safety, and anger was the default surface emotion.

Besides being an automatic defense mechanism, sometimes anger is a learned default behavior. Perhaps controlling anger is difficult for you because you grew up in an environment where anger was the way to resolve conflict.

Perhaps it became a pattern that your nervous system learned to recognize as automatic under stress. Perhaps anger was never shown in your childhood, and you learned to repress it each time you felt it. Suppressed anger stews and forms resentment, and when it eventually leaks out, it is nearly impossible to control.

Four Tips for Controlling Anger

When it comes to controlling anger, there are immediate things to work on and long-term habits to develop. The first two tips will help you manage your responses and reactions, and the following two are for you to work on as you progress in your relationship.

If your anger is so extreme that you become violent and stew in a rage for hours after being activated, it is best that you meet with a mental health professional as soon as you can. Violent rage puts your relationship and partner at risk each time you are triggered. Less intense anger also causes damage, but it is more manageable than fits of rage.

Take a pause

Learn to spot the early effects of an angry outburst and work at stopping it before it spills out. You might find your heart racing, your blood rushing to your face, and your body getting sweaty and heated.

Your partner can also help by giving you a signal to let you know when your communication or body language is giving warning signs of an outburst. This is your signal to pause the conversation and step away until your mood de-escalates and you can communicate without the risk of saying something hurtful.

The more you make a habit of stepping away to cool off before venting, the more in control of your anger you will become. Remember that being angry is not the issue, and sometimes it is warranted and understandable. The issue is uncontrolled anger and letting it spill out in hurtful ways.

Communicate with ‘I’ statements

One of the primary ways anger affects a relationship is in your communication. During anger-fueled interactions, you will be tempted to attack your partner, blame them, or become defensive and avoid taking accountability for your feelings or actions. Controlling anger means taking responsibility for your feelings and actions, then looking beyond them to resolve the issue.

Rather than saying, “You hurt me,” you could say, “I was hurt when you did this.” This distinction is subtle, but it means that you are communicating about your feelings without attacking your partner. Additionally, identifying how you were hurt and which emotions were affected helps lessen their intensity and de-escalate your anger.

Consider why you’re angry and invite your partner to talk about it

As far as long-term commitment to controlling anger goes, it’s important to involve your partner to help you. While you must take responsibility for your emotions and actions, you can rely on your partner’s perspective to help you.

Your partner may have noticed some patterns and triggers to your anger that perhaps you have been unaware of. Their perspective could be vital to your understanding of where your anger comes from and what it manifests in response to.

Anger is often a knee-jerk response to broken rules, disrespect, perceived disrespect, injustice, inequality, or unfairness. Beyond these things, though, everyone has tender spots related to personal trauma, certain beliefs, or simple misunderstandings.

There could be many issues to resolve, but you don’t have to find healing alone. You have someone willing to journey with you despite possibly being hurt by your anger in the past. It takes humility and vulnerability to enlist the support of a loved one to overcome your anger issues, but these are also the ingredients for intimacy.

Commit to learning the patterns of your anger

When you have deeper insight into what triggers your anger, you can begin learning the patterns of your anger. For example, you might feel disrespected by your partner, and rather than addressing the issue, you become distant and cold toward them.

It could be that the way you perceived their disrespect triggered an old wound surrounding your self-worth, and not knowing how to deal with it, you distanced yourself from your partner rather than face more hurt. Your communication with them might become prickly because you still feel the pain from years of damage to your self-esteem.

Every anger issue has an underlying belief and a recurring pattern. Some people have learned to use anger to control or intimidate others, while other people lash out instinctively whenever someone gets too close to a vulnerable area of their life. If you are willing to put the work in and accept help from your partner, you can overcome your anger issues one interaction at a time.

If you would like to talk with a counselor about controlling anger, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We can connect you with someone who will walk with you as you address what needs to be addressed with patience and compassion. Please consult our online catalog or speak with our reception team for more information.