The story: Emily and Brandon had been married for many years. They were young loves. They dated at age sixteen, had a stormy relationship all through college, married after Emily got pregnant, and proceeded to have two other children. They, despite their financial comfort, had always been miserable in their marriage, and the stormy relationship of their early years persisted into later life. But they had kids and did not want to divorce. They handled their misery by living two separate lives. Emily was in charge of the home and the children, and Brandon became the traditional bread winner who traveled for his job. This worked into a relatively ok marriage until Brandon got a promotion which took him off the road and landed him at home for, as far as Emily was concerned, way too many hours a week. And now that Brandon was home, he started to weigh in on Emily’s turf for the first time. He had ideas about how the home should be run and how their three teenagers should be parented. Emily didn’t agree with him and she fought back by paying Brandon lip service, ignoring him, or enlisting their children as her ally. Brandon, getting fed up and frustrated and not really knowing how to discuss anything in a calm way, would say nothing or simply blow. And every time he blew he blamed Emily for his explosion, the cruel things he would say, the silent treatment he would give her, and the irrational anger which he would display as he slammed doors or stormed around their house pouting like a child. All when I confronted him about this, all he could say was he would never ever act like this if his wife would simply be nicer to him. If she would only just listen, he would not get so angry.

The lesson: Brandon has a big problem here because he doesn’t realize that he, and not his wife, is responsible for his anger. He definitely doesn’t think that he is doing anything wrong, even though he clearly feels that he is miserable and unhappily married. He blames his wife for this, and fails to take a close look at himself and how he is contributing to the mess of his marriage. The thing that Brandon fails to see is that nothing is ever going to change until he stops spending 100% of his time pointing his finger at his wife, and spends 80% of his time looking at himself and what he can do to make things better. And Emily needs to do the same. The simple fact is that if Brandon were to take responsibility for his actions, he would actually “empower” himself since it is only when he is able to realize that “I am doing this and this is wrong” that he will ever have the power to change his childlike behavior. In fact, unless Brandon learns to say “I am the one who is letting myself get angry and I really don’t want to act like this” he will only be able to be the person he automatically becomes when he gets angry and not the person he might like to be if he is to be happily married.