Anger has been my demon for my entire life. I don't seem to have a middle ground between mildly annoyed and flat out raging. I should explain that I am a father to an amazing, yet developmentally delayed son, and husband to my wife of 5 years. My mother passed away last year, leaving my father who has random crap all through his house (not 3 year old friendly). My wife never knew her biological mother so she was raised primarily by her grandma and grandfather. Her grandfather passed years ago, and her grandma is frail. Wifey has occasional contact with her irresponsible, self centered father, but he is no support to her at all. All other relatives live hours away. This means when times are tough (one or all of us are sick or relationship issues) we have no one to watch our boy for a while. This creates a pressure cooker environment. Now that you know the circumstances we are in, please let me describe the events of my last anger fueled meltdown.
It happened three days ago. I hade been sick (still sick right now) for two weeks. Horrible coughing, blocked nose, no sleep due to both, run down, horrible taste in the mouth, no medications working - you know the drill. Son has been a difficult for two days, resistant, screaming (loud, ear piercing) and I feel like I'm about to die. Wifey is incapable of settling son so she is getting loud and sharp in her voice. I know its my responsibility to help her, lower her stress. So I try to settle the son, but he resists, and screeches louder and louder. I'm operating on two hours sleep, my ability to keep calm falters and I yell at him while banging the fridge to "STOP, STOP, STOP!' Wifey loses her sh** at me and son runs into our bedroom. I manage to return to calm and decide I could settle the son by putting on a show he likes on the bedroom tv and divert his focus. It works, but in the meantime, my wifey is losing her sh**, talking and swearing loudly at herself over my anger. I tell her multiple times I've gotten our son settled, its okay now, but she escalates. She then tells me all I'm doing is teaching our son to be violent and hit things (and she's right, I know that) but at the time, all that mattered in my opinion was the son was calm and okay. Wifey then tries to wrench son out of my arms and says 'HAVE A GOOD LIFE, WE ARE LEAVING YOU FOREVER.' I begin to cry, realizing how much my anger is destroying our relationship. She instead concedes and storms out to her car. Son stays on the bed, shaken up, but still watching TV. She spouts "you can have him, I don't care anymore!' to which I response in anger "YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO OUR SON!' She closes the door and starts the car - and that pushes me to full rage mode. I justify any actions I take in my head - 'if you lock that car Ill smash my way in.' She locks the car and ball up my fist, originally intending on punching the window, but instead I punch the door - and dent it. Still angry, I then reef on the passenger door handle so hard I break it. Realizing the extent to which I've let my anger overpower me, I return inside and pick up my son. I apologize to him softly, over and over and over. Any anger I had was extinguished - but the damage has been done.
My wife and I have since made up, but in doing so I promised her i'd do something different, something new to stop any more anger fueled outbursts. I am tearing up writing this. I don't know how she still loves me. To be perfectly honest, i'm not sure I can even change, but i'll damned if i'm not gonna try.
I don't expect any one to reply to this - after all it's a long post. But I needed to be perfectly honest and have someone listen. I'm hoping by saying the words it'll help me to understand the effects of my anger fueled actions.
Thanks for ready.