As a therapist, I am always emphasizing the importance of communication. Being willing to express and hear each other's feelings is crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship. However, some feelings are harder to take than others. Take anger. Anger can be hurtful and scary. It is normal to want to retreat and protect yourself from another's wrath. However, if you want a strong and intimate relationship, all feelings need to be expressed and received. You can't include the nice feelings and exclude the hard ones. It just doesn't work that way.

Some people are better at dealing with anger than others.  Some of you may have had anger directed at you in hurtful and damaging ways growing up. Others may have had little experience dealing with anger, having grown up in families that didn't express negative feelings at all. And some of you may have grown up in families where anger was an acceptable emotion that was dealt with in fairly healthy ways.  So whichever category you see yourself in, I'd like to give some helpful hints on how to hear—and I mean really hear—your partner's anger in a way that leaves you and your relationship whole as opposed to fragmented.

When your partner expresses anger, consider the following and try to implement the following process:... Click Read in Browser to read full article