I’m sat with a couple and they are describing an argument that sparked in her an uncontrollable rage.
The gentleman told me his wife ended up screaming at him, she wanted a divorce, she hated him, she said she wished she’d never married him.
At the same time, she was pushing him down the hall, she opened the front door and pushed him out into the cold and slammed the door.
I looked at him and said “at that point outside of your home, what were you thinking?”
He said, “Her message was very clear, I was so angry and upset I decided to drive to our holiday home for a week to collect my thoughts.”
I said to him, I am now going to ask your wife a question and I want you to listen very carefully to what she says to me.
He nodded.
“When you were screaming at him, what was the other voice in your head saying?”
Her head went down.
The husband blurted out “WHAT OTHER VOICE!!!”
She slowly lifted her head and she said “that’s easy, it was saying don’t go.”
“WHAT! WHAT!” said the husband clearly frustrated, “I would never have gone, I didn’t want to go…!”
Then he stopped dead and looked straight at me and paused.
“OMG this is true, she called me every night and I didn’t answer because I was scared.”
“That’s right” I said “it’s true she didn’t want you to go.”
“Firstly misunderstanding her rage and her words is not your fault.”
“What you didn’t understand was the core reason for her upset and her anger.”
Men are designed to listen to the exact words his wife says and he reacts to those words, plus if she says them he thinks she means them and she means them forever.
He didn’t know her words were a vehicle for her real meanings and he needed to look past her words to connect to her.
Now he can see she couldn’t have meant she hates him and wants a divorce because she called him every night he was away.
He did think it was odd.
“If you had understood what was really going on for her I know you would never have left her, in fact, you would have been there to help her.”
This is so confusing for men to understand if they have a wife that operates this way.
There is logic in her rage just not a logic any man would use or naturally understand.
I spend much of my time helping men and women understand these rages and how to correctly translate them and then help them with the actions they must take when they happen.
It is complex, but once they both know how to understand and deal with the rage the outcome is powerful for the couple as the need for the rage becomes less and less.
It’s a valuable tool for both people to learn and can redirect all that passionate energy into activity’s they would both enjoy far more than any out of control conflict.