Anger Is a Stone in the Shoe, Not the Hand
You’re angry, we get it. Things are being said about you that you never imagined, and you are hemorrhaging cash while the lawyers laugh all the way to the bank. Anger is a natural response, and if you weren’t angry, we’d wonder whether you were human at all. But being a man requires being beyond human; being a man demands you think rationally and strategically. Anger is not only useless, it is an incredibly misleading emotion. Treat anger like a tadpole treats its tail — when it grows up, it no longer has any use for it.
Anger as Strength
We confuse anger for many different things, and here we will discuss three: strength, conviction, and communication. When we get angry, we imagine ourselves as strong — naturally, because when we are angry we are probably at our most confrontational. This feeling is not altogether unwarranted; it relates to our fight/flight heritage. In the animal world, when confronted with an attack, animals enlarge themselves; they roar, snarl, growl, bark, howl, and show their teeth. This is exactly what you are doing when you are angry. You hope, subconsciously, that your expression will scare off whatever is attacking you.
Well, this strategy may serve you in a street fight or in jail, but not in divorce. Every expression of anger will not only fail to scare off the process — it will feed it, making it bigger, costlier, and more problematic for you. But the worst part is this: anger releases adrenaline into the body, causing a high, which makes you believe you actually feel good about it — that you are doing something correct. You feel like you are taking a stand or defending yourself, very noble things to do of course, but strategically useless. You aren’t in the jungle and you’re not in the can. Be a man — take control of your anger so it doesn’t mislead you.
Anger as Conviction
The second thing we confuse anger for is conviction — or at least, in a state of anger (which divorce tends to impel), we lose sight of what our real convictions are. We think because we are angry about something, we must believe in that something deeply; it must be true. Or because we are angry and have been lied about, everything the other person wants or has to say is wrong.
This confusion induces the same detrimental effect as confusing anger with strength: it confuses you and makes you lose sight of what you really want out of this process or even your life. For example, we know a guy going through the process who keeps fighting with his (ex) wife about the kids going to her parents’ home for the holidays. He has his reasons — he claims the parents speak negatively of him in front of the kids, and he is probably right — but none of us believe, even for a second, that our kids shouldn’t see the in-laws or that the in-laws would ever be permanently removed from their lives. But in a state of anger, you might come to believe all those things. It is a massive waste of money, time, and energy. Check what you believe when you are angry.
Anger as Communication
Have you ever yelled at someone and wondered, “Why aren’t they getting me? Why don’t they understand what I’m saying?” You think, based on the confusions made above, that when you are yelling and shouting you are being clear. In fact, you are so sure of your clarity, you raise your voice — there is no shyness in what you are saying.
Remember during this process: very little of anything you communicate will be received well or correctly. Why? Because she is angry too. But you cannot control her anger — just yours. And yours is costing you money, so stop it.