Prevention in family services : approaches to family wellness / edited by David R. Mace.
- Date:
- [1983], ©1983
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Prevention in family services : approaches to family wellness / edited by David R. Mace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
197/260 page 195
![Mace [195] The onset of anger has to be immediate. Physiologically, it is the production of a surge of energy, in response to a danger signal. Strictly speaking, the anger is there before you have any control over it. But once you are aware of it, you have the power and the right to decide how to respond. Anger need not, therefore, develop into an aggressive response. In fact, many of us learn to suppress it. Sometimes that is appropriate in that it is the best way of handling the situation. But if your relationship with the other person is one you want to develop positively, neither aggressive attack nor silent withdrawal will achieve your goal. Anger may develop just as readily against your best friend as against your worst enemy. The desirable way to deal with it, however, differs fundamentally in these two situations. In the case of the enemy, your objective would probably be to drive him or her away. In the case of your friend, your desire is to bring him or her back to closeness. In the relationship of John and Mary, therefore, we have two emotions operating. The one that is drawing them together as trust between them develops over time is usually called love. The one that tends to interrupt the process by pushing them apart is anger. Of course their desire for intimacy can easily persuade John and Mary that love is a good emotion and that when a contrary force interferes and pushes them apart this must be by contrast a bad emotion. But this is not really true. Their anger, in fact, is protecting them from undesirable results that could follow if love alone could exercise its full force in drawing them together. This could lead to suffocating closeness of unhealthy inter¬ dependence that could be damaging to their separateness, which is vital for the preservation of the individual personhood of each. The exact degree to which John and Mary can effectively tolerate intimacy may not be the same as for other couples and may indeed change over time for them. The balance between separateness and togetherness is never constant—it fluctuates continuously. What is important, however, is that this balance should be main¬ tained. Only then can the relationship reach its maximum level of mutual fulfillment. And the mechanism for fine-tuning that vital balance is the interaction between love and anger. Far from being opponents, if given the chance, these two important emotions will cooperate as colleagues in enhancing the relationship.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18037604_0198.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
