Cece431 wrote:The reason why I'm NOT discussing in full detail our relationship, or my side of things and so on, is due to the fact that we are in couples therapy...
We've been getting information drip-by-drip here. For instance, I hadn't seen mention of couples therapy when I wrote my last post. You know your issues, you've been in therapy four years for that, and now -- because you two split up last November -- he's joined you in couples therapy. That therapist (and I hope it isn't the same one you've been seeing all along?) sees and hears you both. Why would you come here asking "Bf with horrible anger pls help!"
You keep saying it's because you want to understand anger. Anger arises when someone's boundaries have been crossed. If it can't be dealt with at the time, ie. when it's a small child reacting internally to parental abuse, it gets stuck and goes on playing out. Either for life, or until the person wakes up and does something about it.
Men are typically reluctant to have therapy. Most of them will agree to it only because something they want is at risk, eg. your bf's relationship with you. Attending therapy will placate you and make you think he's doing something about it. He isn't.
You are. He can now expect that
you will go on dealing with
his anger indefinitely.
I've written to you in general terms about anger, which you've said is all you want here. I had no intention that you would consider yourself the person to fix it.
I do see someone regularly for 4 years. With all due respect, do you sincerely believe that I haven't discussed any of this with my phycologist?
I think it highly likely you spend most of your sessions talking about Him. The psychologist will deal with whatever material you give her.
A pro-active one (such as I am) would listen to
some information about him, but would keep drawing you back to your own stuff. A lazy therapist will just listen and make sympathetic noises as you go on about your boyfriend's regular explosions. The idea of the latter is that eventually you run out of puff and realise how foolish you sound for putting up with this. Either will get you where you want to go, provided you stick with it, but there's the express route and there's all-around-the-houses. Most clients, especially those who don't have a fortune to spend, want to deal with their own stuff as fast as they can.
Point is, when you've dealt with your stuff you feel much better about yourself and won't want the bother of a partner who hasn't deal with his. Your choice of someone acting-out shows where you've got stuck, and it appears from what you say that your therapist is happy to let you flounder. She's worked out that you'd rather talk about Him than about you, and that if she insists on bringing therapy back to you, you'll probably leave and take your business somewhere else.
So for the subject of my past trauma and enabling his issues blah blah blah, is not at all why I came here.
No. Your first post said:
do you have any suggestions when he blows up on me? For example, I've noticed if he's actually wrong, he gets more angry at me, if he feels like he embarrassed himself, he gets angry at me. If I catch him in a lie, he twist and gets angry at me. What I don't know how to deal with is when he does blow, he holds on to his anger for so long. He will leave me, say he does not love me at all and a week later come back saying I'm the love of his life
... so you apparently wanted a script that would stop him blowing up, or, failing that, one that would stop him walking away from you, and staying away. You wanted to know whether he actually loved you, because on a good day he did and on a bad day he didn't.
This is a re-enactment of what went on for you as a little girl. One or both parents were angry, blew up at you, withdrew their love from you... and you
still think there's something you can say or do to stop angry people 'leaving'. After four years in therapy for attachment trauma (with a round-the-houses psychologist), two things:
1) You haven't done anything about the original trauma
2) You think you're now qualified to fix someone who has the same problem:
I spoke to my bf calmly today about his anger, where you made one helpful comment about where you would start. He opened up to me for the first time. We spoke about his brother and father, how it was like growing up it was interesting to learn things he hasn't shared with me in the past...
Maybe that was the script you needed? If it stops him blowing up and telling you he doesn't love you, so much the better.
Self-esteem doesn't sop up the anger and blame for everything
someone else is feeling. The time for that was in childhood, when you had no choice. So I'll ask you now, as Richard did on page one:
What about your issues? Would it not be better to learn about anger by looking at you and why you choose to be in a relationship where the man lies, becomes angry and threatens to leave you?
