Over the Shock and GALing 6

[AlexEN]

Thinker,

Your post reminded me of something I'd long-since forgotten. My W had always accused me of having "anger management" issues. So, we agreed to go see an "expert" together. Almost immediately, he started addressing her anger issues and mine were cast aside. He honed in on her (and her anger) and how it related to her FOO issues. Needless to say, she became very defensive (and angry) that he believed it was she who had the issues and my anger issues (despite what W had me believing about myself) were well within the "normal" range. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with anger. How it manifests itself can be problematic. In any event, we stopped going soon thereafter, because at that point it all became "psychobabble" to her... Wonder if your C might notice the same in your W... Other scary similarity between your W and mine is the lengths to which my W went to undermine our New Beginnings Workshop program (a less religious version of Retrouvaille) and total unwillingness to "work" on her own issues... Doesn't answer your what letting go means question, but you're not alone in terms of the symptoms you are seeing...

-AlexEN

Anger is blinding, I have to say. I learned a valuable lesson in this with Coach. He really was an angry guy - it came out in socially acceptable ways - but I knew what it was and it really took a toll on us. When he started to get a good handle on it and working through it, guess who else found out what anger really is? Yep - the Greek. Coach would tell me "YOU have an anger problem, too." I remember resisting that to the nth degree b/c I couldn't see it to save my life....until he got his under control. That really highlighted for me where my anger resided. And that's scary, for the record.

On some level, I must have known this about myself but was able to avoid it so very long by making Coach's anger the focus. Glad I cut that junk out
Greek

Greek,

Well said.... Nothing more true than this. Our anger feeds on each others'. Someone has to break the pattern.

-A