Alison: Well I guarantee that your H has a lot more emotions than just anger, it sounds like he's covering up those other emotions with anger. Of course, anger can be appropriate and useful and sometimes healthy, but anger is ABOUT something. Your H does sound very depressed, it often manifests as anger in men. I can see that it must be super hard to validate when he is shut down, I sometimes have that with my H. When I say you shouldn't validate anger, well you shouldn't validate anger expressed with you as the target. That is abuse. Anger itself is a valid emotion and can be validated but it's not ok to dump that anger on someone else. Women are often taught that anger is not allowed, whereas men are often taught that it's the only acceptable emotion allowed, just to complicate matters...
Sorry we keep highjacking your thread LB55, see it as a compliment to your validating expertise!
