Why some men don’t allow others to be angry

A big struggle for some men is to accept the emotions of others, in particular anger and in particular with their partner.

This is because they themselves have a poor relationship with anger or have disowned it.

If you were like me, I have this ability to be hypervigilant, to perceive potential threats and in particular, anger.

Growing up, anger in the household was terrifying and painful, and didn’t have pleasant consequences. So my response would either be to run away from it or be the peacemaker, to somehow control it and mitigate it.

I would do anything to avoid it and prevent it from coming out, even from myself. I learned not to trust anger in myself and the potential damage I could do or the way I may be perceived if I let it out, so I locked it away. Often telling people “I’m just not an angry person”.

This showed up in relationships, whenever my super hypervigilant ability sensed even a modicum of anger brewing from the other person, I would immediately try to change subject (avoid) or praise and mitigate (peacemaker). I was constantly on edge, trying to control the other persons emotions and my emotional state would be closely tied to theirs.

This was not a healthy way to live.

We deny other people’s emotions because of two reasons:

1. We learned that a certain emotion isn’t safe for us most likely from childhood. So whenever we sense it in our environment, we do what we can to control it, often attempting to control others and how they express their emotions. In some cases, even shaming them for feeling a certain way. We do this to prevent the consequences and pain we felt as a child, now in the present.

2. We have disowned that emotion in ourselves. When we deny others emotions, it’s because he have denied it in ourselves. It doesn’t exist to us, and to prove it, we must not let it occur in others, especially our partners, who we are most vulnerable to. This stems from a fear of what an emotion means to us and our perception as a man. We are uncomfortable to see others cry, because we uncomfortable crying ourselves and what it may means for us if we did. Same with anger.

We unconsciously don’t allow others to express certain emotions we ourselves have denied, are uncomfortable with or are afraid of the consequences they will bring.

The more we bring awareness to these denied emotions within us and process them in a healthy way, revealing that they are in fact not ‘threats’ at all, or have nothing to do with our ‘self image’, the more we can accept all the emotions of others we care about.

This promotes feeling more secure in ourselves, creating greater safety to our partners and in turn healthier relationships.