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

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Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships Page 15

by Harriet Lerner


  Third, Alicia took responsibility for setting clear rules about behavior and enforcing them. For example, throwing a tantrum was unacceptable behavior. If Claudia did this, Alicia would pick her up and take her to her room, where she would have to stay until she calmed down. Alicia also clarified that it was not acceptable for Claudia to continue to ignore Carlos whenever he spoke to her. “You do not have to talk to Carlos if you don’t want to,” Alicia said to her daughter. “But if he asks you a question, tell him if you don’t want to talk about it instead of just ignoring him.” For several weeks Claudia proceeded to say “I don’t want to talk about it” every time Carlos initiated a conversation. Alicia decided that she could live with this behavior. Alicia also observed that the more she pursued her daughter to relate to Carlos, and the more Carlos attempted to move closer to Claudia, the more Claudia distanced. She and Carlos were both able to back off a bit and provide Claudia with the space she wanted. When Claudia no longer felt pressured to like Carlos or to feel close to him, she felt more comfortable and relaxed in his presence and in time she began to warm up to him.

  With children, as with adults, change comes about when we stop trying to shape up the other person and begin to observe patterns and find new options for our own behavior. As we sharpen our observational skills, some patterns may be easy to identify (“I notice that the more I ask Claudia to discuss her feelings about the divorce, the more she closes up. But when I leave her alone and calmly share some of my own reactions to the divorce, she will sometimes begin to talk about herself.”) Other patterns that involve three key people are more difficult to observe, as we shall see in the next chapter.

  THINKING IN THREES

  Stepping Out of Family Triangles

  Recently I visited my parents in Phoenix. I made this particular trip because my father—who prides himself on having made it to age seventy-five without even a sniffle—suddenly had a heart attack. It was a wonderful visit, but after I returned, I found myself feeling intense surges of anger toward my children. During the next few days, Matthew began waking up with headaches, Ben became increasingly rambunctious, and the boys fought constantly with each other. My two children became the prime target for my free-floating anger.

  As I talked my situation over with my friend Kay Kent, a sensitive expert on families, I began to make the connection between my anger toward my children and my visit home to my parents. The good time that I had had with my parents was a reminder, not only of the geographical distance between us, but also of how much I would miss them when they were no longer around. On this particular visit, I could no longer deny their age. My father was tired, considerably slowed down, and easily out of breath. My mother, a spirited survivor of two cancers and a recent surgery, seemed her usual self; however, I was all too aware of her mortality.

  Kay suggested that I address this new awareness directly with my children and parents, and so I did. At the dinner table the following night, I apologized to my whole family for being such a grouch and grump and I explained to Matt and Ben that I was really feeling sad following my Phoenix trip because Grandma and Grandpa were getting old and Grandpa’s heart attack was a reminder to me that they would not be around forever and that one of them might die soon. “That,” I explained, “is why I’ve been so angry.” I also wrote a letter to my folks telling them how much I had enjoyed my visit and how, after my return home, I had come in touch with my concerns about their aging and my sadness about my eventual future without them.

  What followed was quite dramatic: Both boys relaxed considerably and the fighting diminished. Each asked questions about death and dying and inquired for the first time about the specifics of their grandfather’s heart attack and grandmother’s cancer. I stopped feeling angry and things returned to normal.

  The following week I received a letter from my father, who gave only a perfunctory reply to my self-disclosure by suggesting I not dwell on the morbid side of life. In the same envelope, however, he enclosed a separate lengthy letter to each of the boys explaining how the heart works and exactly what had happened in his own case. He concluded his letter to Matthew by directly addressing the subject of death. These letters, which were factual and warm, began the first correspondence between the two generations.

  Underground issues from one relationship or context invariably fuel our fires in another. When we are aware of this process, we can pay our apologies to the misplaced target of our anger and get back on course: “I’m sorry I snapped at you, but I had a terrible day with my supervisor at work.” “I’m scared about my health and I guess that’s why I blew up at you.” “I’ve been angry at everybody all day and then I remembered today is the anniversary of my brother’s death.” Sometimes, however, we are not aware that we are detouring strong feelings of anger from one person to another—or that underground anxiety from one situation is popping up as anger somewhere else.

  It is not simply that we displace a feeling from one person to another; rather, we reduce anxiety in one relationship by focusing on a third party, who we unconsciously pull into the situation to lower the emotional intensity in the original pair. For example, if I had continued to direct my anger toward my misbehaving boys (who, in response, would have misbehaved more), I would have felt less directly anxious about the life-cycle issue with my aging parents. In all likelihood, I would not have identified and spoken to the real emotional issue at all.

  This pattern is called a “triangle,” and triangles can take many forms. On a transient basis triangles operate automatically and unconsciously in all human contexts including our family, our work setting, and our friendship networks. But triangles can also become rigidly entrenched, blocking the growth of the individuals in them and keeping us from identifying the actual sources of conflict in our relationships. The example below illustrates first a transient, benign triangle and then a problematic, entrenched one.

  A Triangle on the Home Front

  Judy is a real estate agent and Victor, her husband, is a salesman for the telephone company. On this particular day Victor has a meeting after work and phones Judy to tell her that he will not be home until seven o’clock. Judy has been with the children all afternoon and finds herself tense and tired by the time the evening meal rolls around. She cooks dinner for the children, who, sensing her mood, act out more than usual, which only puts a greater strain on her. She cleans up, and watches the clock for Victor to come home. At seven-thirty Victor walks through the front door.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he says. “There was an accident on the road and I got stuck.”

  It is an entirely reasonable excuse, but Judy is furious. Not, however—as she experiences it—because of her own needs. She is not able to acknowledge that.

  “I’m really upset!” she says, with intense anger in her voice. “Johnny and Mary [the children] have been waiting all day for you to come home. Now it’s almost their bedtime. And I’m especially worried about Johnny. You’ve hardly been with him this week. He has been missing you terribly. He is a son without a father!”

  What is happening here? The question of Victor’s parenting may be a worthwhile subject for discussion, but it is not to the point. At this moment Judy is using the children as a deflection from an important issue between her and Victor. Victor, too, may have his own motives for colluding with this deflection.

  Perhaps Judy feels that she has no right to be angry about Victor’s late return. After all, the meeting was an important part of his job and the traffic jam was not his doing. Her belief that her anger is not rational, legitimate, or mature may prevent her from being able to articulate it, even to herself. Or it may be that the issue is a loaded one. Victor’s lateness may touch on Judy’s long-buried anger regarding the extent to which Victor is pulling his weight in the marriage.

  If Judy and Victor have a flexible relationship, free from unmanageable levels of anxiety, the triangle will be temporary and of little consequence. When Judy cools off a bit, she will be able to share her feeli
ngs with Victor, including what a hard day she had and how angry and frustrated she felt when he did not return at five to offer her company and relief. But what if Judy does not feel safe speaking to Victor in her own voice? What if this couple is rigidly guarded against identifying the underground conflicts in their marriage?

  Over time, a triangle consisting of Judy, Victor, and one of the children may become rigidly entrenched. Judy may find herself constantly blowing up at one of the kids instead of at Victor or she may intensify her relationship with Mary or Johnny in a manner that will help keep things calm on the marital front. This can happen in any number of ways: Mother and Johnny may form an overly close relationship that will compensate for a distant marriage and help keep father in an outside position in the family. Mother may complain to her daughter about her husband, rather than confining these issues to the marriage, where they belong. Or one of the children may become a major focus for concern, perhaps through the development of an emotional or behavior problem, thus drawing Judy’s attention away from her own dissatisfaction in the marriage and perhaps enabling Victor and Judy to experience a pseudo-closeness as parents attempting to care for their troubled child.

  The third leg of the triangle need not be a child. It could be Judy’s mother, an in-law, or a person with whom Judy or Victor is having an affair. Triangles take on an endless variety of forms; but in each case, the intensity between Judy and a third party will be fueled by unaddressed issues in her marriage, and marital issues will become increasingly difficult to work on as the triangle becomes more entrenched. Of course, Judy’s anger at her husband may be gaining steam from unaddressed issues with others, such as her own mother or father.

  People of both sexes and all ages participate in multiple, interlocking triangles that may span several generations. But, as we have seen, women often have a greater, exaggerated fear about rocking the boat in an important relationship with a man. Thus, we are likely to avoid a direct confrontation and instead detour our anger through a relationship with a less powerful person, such as a child or another woman. How might such a triangle operate at work?

  A Triangle on the Job

  Melissa was a bright young woman who was appointed Director of Nursing in a small private hospital run almost exclusively by men. As it turned out, she was occupying a token position that afforded her little real authority. Month after month, Melissa sat in meetings where her contributions were ignored and where she felt increasingly powerless to influence institutional policy affecting the nursing discipline.

  Melissa’s sense of gratitude for being among the “chosen few,” her dread of her own anger at male authorities, and her unconscious fear that greater personal clarity might lead to a confrontation that would lose her the approval of those in power—all combined to keep her from feeling angry and addressing issues directly where they belonged. Melissa’s customary style was to behave deferentially to high-status males and to protect men in authority from the criticisms of other women. Perhaps this style played some part in her landing the director’s position to begin with.

  Melissa began to deal with her underground anxiety and anger in a triangular fashion. First she began to supervise her nursing staff very closely, moving in quickly at the slightest hint of a problem. Over time she became increasingly reactive to one particular nurse, Suzanne, who became the third leg of the triangle. Suzanne was an outspoken, highly competent young woman who was not particularly mindful of rules and paperwork deadlines and who easily voiced the anger at male leadership that Melissa could not. Melissa overreacted to any careless error that Suzanne made or paperwork deadline that she failed to meet, and began to treat her as a “special problem” who needed to be watched. For example, Melissa wrote long memos to another of Suzanne’s supervisors about Suzanne’s late paperwork rather than express her concerns directly to Suzanne. As Suzanne’s anxiety skyrocketed, she unwittingly escalated things further by running around and trying to form allies among her fellow nurses to join her in criticizing Melissa. Tensions between the two women continued to mount. Suzanne’s late paperwork became a more serious problem and six months down the road Melissa fired her, with the seal of approval from her male superiors.

  Melissa and Suzanne were involved in a triangle that began at the highest levels of the organization. The relationship between Melissa and her male superiors could stay calm and nonconflictual because the underground anger was played out lower down the hierarchy, in this case at Suzanne’s expense. Melissa made no moves to empower the nursing staff within the organization, and this remained the unspoken and unacknowledged hot issue between her and the male authorities.

  Was Melissa, then, the cause of the problem? Did it start with her? Of course not. If Melissa had been in an institution where women were truly empowered and where she, as a female, was not a numerically scarce commodity at the top, her behavior would have been quite different. In fact, research indicates that women who hold positions of authority in male-dominated settings are not able to clearly define their own selves or successfully identify issues common to women until the relative numbers of men and women become more balanced. No one person was to blame for the scapegoating of Suzanne, nor was she a helpless victim of circumstances who had no participation in her fate.

  In the best of all possible worlds, we might envision separate, person-to-person relationships with our friends, coworkers, and family members that were not excessively influenced by other relationships. For example, our relationship with our mother and that with our father would not be largely defined by the fact that they were battling something out together. We would stay out of conflicts between other parties and keep other people from getting in the middle of our own fights. If we were angry at Sue, we would go to Sue about it and not complain to Sally about Sue. We would not detour anger and intensity from one relationship to another. That’s the ideal. However, we achieve it only more or less. Triangles are present in all human systems. When anxiety mounts between two people or conflicts begin to surface, a third party will automatically and unconsciously be drawn in. All of us participate in numerous interlocking triangles we are not even aware of. Many of these are not particularly problematic, but one or more may well be. How do we get out of something that we may not even realize we’re in?

  Understanding triangles requires that we keep an eye on two things; First, what unresolved and unaddressed issues with an important other (not infrequently someone from an earlier generation) are getting played out in our current relationships? Intense anger at someone close to us can signal that we are carrying around strong, unacknowledged emotions from another important relationship. Second, what is our part in maintaining triangular patterns that keep us stuck? To find out, we must begin the complex task of observing our three-person patterns. Let’s consider a key triangle in a family that was plagued by anger and anxiety on all fronts.

  A MULTIGENERATIONAL TRIANGLE IN ACTION: THE KESLER FAMILY

  “I’m here because I’m very worried about my son Billy,” explained Ms. Kesler, who had called the Menninger Foundation to request help with her oldest son and to get some relief from her own feelings of chronic anger and stress. “He’s always been a pretty good kid, but since third grade this year, he’s been having school problems. Billy and his father are at each other’s throats about it and their relationship is deteriorating. I’ve done everything I can to change the situation between Billy and his dad and to help Billy be more responsible at school. Nothing helps. I’m feeling angry at Billy and I’m also angry at my husband, John, who is taking a punitive approach with the boy. I tried to get John to come with me today, but he’s not interested. He thinks that therapists are quacks and that this is a lot of bunk.”

  In the first few minutes of our first appointment, Ms. Kesler’s view of the problem became clear. The “problem” in the family was Billy and Billy’s father. If we could ask Mr. Kesler, he might see the “problem” as Billy and Billy’s mother. It is expectable, predictable, and quite normal for
family members to define a problem in this way. When we feel angry, we tend to see people rather than patterns as the problem.

  Below is a diagram of the Keslers’ nuclear family. Squares stand for males and circles for females. The horizontal line connecting a square and a circle indicates a marriage. Children are drawn on vertical lines coming down from the marriage line, in chronological order, beginning with the oldest on the left. We can see that eight-year-old Billy is the first-born child, who has a six-year-old brother, Joe, and a four-year-old sister, Ann.

 

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