Dealing With The Initial Fury

Anne Bercht

Anne Bercht, director Beyond Affairs Network,co-founder, along with her husband Brian, of www.passionatelife.ca, a website dedicated to creating a healthy, passionate marriage.Authors of “My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.

Being angry is not wrong. It is a healthy and an appropriate emotional response to injustice. Anger is pain turned outward. Anger serves a constructive purpose in bringing about healing. However, anger needs to be channeled in healthy, constructive ways.

A key to recovering from infidelity (especially if you are interested in rebuilding your marriage) is to avoid bad responses. Bad responses create greater problems.

Thoughts on Anger

"It was the hardest of emotions for me to overcome, but I finally accepted the fact that it happened and that I had no control over the actions of my spouse. I continually reminded myself that unless I controlled my own actions, I would be bound by my own stubbornness to remain in the anger and resentment stage. The constant dwelling on what happened is what keeps people stuck there. Again I had to control my own thoughts and move ahead. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be done especially if you choose to stay focused." – An Affair Survivor

"I think, hard as it is to accept, that 'tincture of time' is the best way to get past both the hurt and the anger. I also know that it is possible to get stuck in either place. So what I did, instead of trying to rush the process, was to really LET myself be sad and then to LET myself be angry for a while. I had spent so much time and energy trying to move on, that I found I was denying myself the right to feel what I NEEDED to feel in order to heal. Once I acknowledged my feelings and that I wasn't crazy for feeling them, it was much easier to let them go. Now when negative feelings come, I can acknowledge them and put them away much faster. But it doesn't happen overnight. It has been nearly 3 years for me and I'm finally getting there." – An Affair Survivor

There are two types of anger to overcome: the initial reaction fury anger and the long-term bitterness and resentment slowly festering inside anger.

Helpful Strategies for Dealing with the Initial Reaction Fury Anger

Often this anger feels uncontrollable. It is not uncontrollable. Controlling immediate reaction anger is a learned skill.

I’m talking about the kind of anger where you are so mad it feels as though your blood could start to boil at any moment. Your heart rate is way up, your face is red, you feel like a time bomb ready to explode, and you fear if you let the first word out of your mouth, (like popping a cork from a bottle), the rest of the angry words will fly out at high volume without control. And you will likely say a whole bunch of things you don’t really mean. Words once spoken can never be taken back.
 
 

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01/07/2009 5:54 PM