Is It My Fault My Husband Is Always Angry?
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When your husband is angry all the time, it can affect your emotional state and your marriage in many ways. If it feels like he’s always mad, you may start to think it could be your fault, but he is responsible for his own behavior. Read on to explore why your husband might be feeling so much anger, how it can affect both of you, and what coping methods therapy can provide.
Why is he always angry?
Anger is one of the basic human emotions that everyone experiences from time to time. However, if your husband seems to react to everything with anger, whether appropriate to the situation or not, he may have anger issues. Exploring the underlying issues that cause his anger can help him address the problem at its source. However, it may require working with a licensed mental health professional to identify unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors, as many people have trouble navigating the process independently.
“There are psychological tests that measure the intensity of angry feelings, how prone to anger you are, and how well you handle it. But chances are good that if you do have a problem with anger, you already know it. If you find yourself acting in ways that seem out of control and frightening, you might need help finding better ways to deal with this emotion.” — American Psychological Association
His anger is not your fault
It can be essential to remember that you are not responsible for your husband’s behavior or his emotional reactions. Anger is how he chooses to react, whether by conscious choice or refusal to practice emotional management. Blaming you for his anger instead of examining his feelings is unhealthy and can cause conflict in your marriage. Unless you are directly to blame for his anger because you did something intending to make him angry, avoid taking the blame when you aren’t responsible. It can reinforce the belief that he isn’t accountable for his behavior.
Identifying the cause of your husband’s anger
There can be many reasons your husband is angry. Studies show that anger is often a response to perceived threats. If he’s feeling insecure about the relationship, work, or financial matters, those emotions could be expressed as anger. Grief, depression, anxiety, and many other feelings may present as anger if he lacks the emotional regulation to process his feelings in healthy ways.
Health conditions that can cause anger as a symptom
- Bipolar Depression Disorder
- Intermittent Explosive Disorder
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder
- Borderline Personality Disorder
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Various other mental health conditions
- Alcohol or Substance Use Disorders
- Brain Tumor
- Excessive Stress
- Grief
- Unresolved Trauma
- Low Testosterone
Is he emotionally intelligent, aware, and literate?
Functional emotional regulation requires a person to have the emotional intelligence, awareness, and literacy to recognize their feelings, understand their effects and what they mean, and express feelings and needs to their partner.
How constant anger affects you and your husband
Over time, consistent patterns of anger can affect you and your husband in ways you may not necessarily realize. Explore some of the long-term effects of anger.
- Dealing with your husband’s constant anger can negatively affect your mood, self-confidence, relationship satisfaction, trust, comfort, and many other areas of your marriage. Finding healthy ways to manage your emotional reactions to his behavior can be crucial.
- Anger and stress can cause similar reactions, affecting your husband's mood, behavior, and body, which can worsen with time, such as high blood pressure, headache, stomach issues, muscle tension, anxiety, restlessness, depression, and social withdrawal. Studies show that persistent anger and hostility may affect lung function.
What to do if your husband is always angry
If your husband is always angry, you may not know how to discuss the problem without causing more issues. Explore strategies that may help you address your husband’s anger and its effects on both of you.
If his anger turns violent, it can be important to know the available resources because no one deserves to be abused. If you’ve experienced domestic or intimate partner violence, you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).
Practice self-care and prioritize yourself
Taking care of yourself and safeguarding your mental, physical, and emotional well-being can be crucial. Find the things that make you feel happy, safe, and healthy, and don’t let them slide down your list of priorities.
Change your perspective about his anger
No matter how much you may want to, you cannot control your husband’s behavior or how he reacts in a given situation. Changing your perspective about how you approach his anger may be helpful. You only have control over how you respond to a problem, so try to take a step back and address his anger with empathy to look for what's really upsetting him.
Actively discuss emotions and needs in your marriage
Your home and the emotional intimacy of your marriage should be a safe place to express feelings and needs—for both of you. Make it a regular habit to talk about your daily experiences, how they make you feel, and practical coping strategies to manage anger.
Support and encourage him as he works to change his behaviors
Making meaningful changes to how he thinks and acts can be a complex and challenging process. Your husband may appreciate your encouragement and emotional support as he reshapes his habits.
Remember that you get to express your emotions too
It can often feel like your husband’s anger takes priority because he expresses it louder or more insistently, but your feelings are valid, and you should be able to tell him if you’re upset. Studies show that for some couples, fighting can help you work through issues and contribute to healthy communication when you have practical conflict resolution methods in place.
Incorporate your knowledge of him into conflict management
You presumably know your husband and what helps calm him when stressed. Use your knowledge of his emotions and coping strategies to influence the conflict management strategies you use to work through tense situations.
Encourage him to seek help
If your husband has trouble controlling his anger, you might try suggesting anger management therapy to help him find healthy ways to identify and process his feelings and reshape negative thought patterns or behaviors with the support and guidance of a mental health professional.
Many therapists use a technique called cognitive restructuring to help people change thought patterns and how they react to feeling anger. This strategy can help people reframe the situations that make them angry to separate their feelings from the reality of the circumstances.
Explore different healthcare options
There are a variety of psychotherapies that can help your husband find healthy ways to manage his anger. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a popular treatment for recognizing and changing unhealthy habits. Family therapy can help repair damage caused by persistent anger. Dialectical behavior therapy may be used for people with frequent or intense angry outbursts, and psychodynamic therapy examines past experiences to determine how they affect current behaviors.
Coping tips for anger management
Try some of these tips to help manage your anger in healthy ways that don’t damage your marriage or suggest practical conflict resolution if your partner struggles to control their anger.
- Establish the habit of recognizing when anger becomes the primary emotion you feel and take a moment to think before saying something you’ll regret.
- Try using humor to break the situation's tension and distract from anger.
- Practice relaxation methods like deep breathing techniques, yoga, or meditation.
- Count to ten and redirect your energy and attention to something more productive.
— American Psychological Association
How therapy can help your husband manage anger and support you
Anger can cause substantial damage to a relationship, making it difficult to feel emotionally and intimately connected to your husband. If your husband’s anger issues negatively affect your family, consider working with a licensed therapist online through a relationship-focused virtual therapy platform like Regain. Therapy can help your husband find healthy ways to manage his anger and help you process the emotions you feel because of it.
Studies show that anger management therapy is equally effective online and in person and could help your husband find healthier ways to deal with his emotions. Similarly, recent research on virtual psychotherapy from the American Psychological Association shows comparable results between face-to-face and teletherapy treatment.
Takeaway
Everyone gets angry sometimes, but if your husband reacts to nearly everything with anger, it can affect you in numerous ways. The information in this article offers insight into why your husband may be constantly angry and how therapy—individual, couple, or family—can help you repair any damage to the relationship so you can move forward with practical coping skills and open communication.
How do I deal with an irritable husband?
Women have often been called the fairer sex, and this has partially been due to the predilection of men to react with, and experience anger far more often and with more aggression than women tend to. Nevertheless, dealing with an angry or irritable husband can be extremely difficult and make it feel like your quality of life has significantly diminished. Although you cannot control someone else’s behavior (nor should you try to), it can sometimes feel like your responsibility to make your partner happy, especially if your partner is a constantly angry person. Nevertheless, one of the best ways to deal with an irritable husband—or just a generally angry person—is to give yourself and the angry person some space. Giving both of you plenty of space can help give you a breather from the person’s irritability and can perhaps give your partner some much-needed space, as well.
Giving space is a temporary solution, at best; however, a constantly angry person can quickly and easily wear on your nerves and cause a lot of strain in your marriage. Over time, a constantly irritable husband can make your relationship feel stifling and unbearable, and your home can feel unsafe. Constantly walking on eggshells is certainly not healthy. Although the immediate reaction to a constantly angry person as a spouse is not to get divorced, there are some boundaries you can set and tactics you can use to try to diffuse the situation.
If your husband is angry constantly, potential tools include:
- Communicate your concern with your partner. If you are struggling with your partner’s constant anger, don’t hesitate to reach out to your partner and know how their behavior affects you. While it may not immediately change the air in your home, your partner may not be aware of how his behavior is affecting his family, or may not even be aware of his behavior, at all. You can come to the conversation with anger management techniques, anger management classes, or even just a list of reasons why your husband’s anger is of concern to you.
- Offering designated space for your partner. If your partner’s irritability seems to be linked to something in particular—a pet in the home, for instance, or the state of your finances—try to develop a plan together to reduce the source of the tension and improve the atmosphere in your home.
- Choose your battles. Reacting to your partner’s anger with your own anger is likely to escalate a situation rather than improve it. While you are not responsible for your partner’s emotional state, you can pay close attention to your own behavior and make sure that you are maintaining your own emotional and mental health.
If your partner’s anger and irritability are not harming you or your children, it may take some time to ride out the waves of irritability and frustration if you have children. If, however, that anger morphs into aggression, abuse, or unhealthy behavior, it may be time to seek out help from a mental health professional and look into the options that are best for yourself and your partner.
How do I cope when my husband is always angry?
Very often, the best way to deal with someone who is constantly angry is to give them plenty of space. People who are always angry can quickly damage your self-esteem and put a great deal of strain on the relationship. Depending on the exact nature of the relationship in question, you can either put some distance between yourself and the person constantly exhibiting signs of anger, or you can put some firm boundaries in place to make sure your relationship has some, and you are not subjected to constant outbursts.
If a spouse is a person who is always angry, you cannot put the same amount of space between the two of you as you might be able to put between yourself and a friend or yourself and a coworker.
Instead, you can utilize the following tactics:
- Reach out. For some, constant anger is a symptom of depression and warrants a gentle inquiry into the state of their mental health. If your spouse is constantly angry, ask how they are doing, if they feel stressed, and if there is anything the two can do to more effectively support your relationship and your respective mental health. You can even suggest attending anger management classes together to help develop healthier coping mechanisms for constant anger issues.
- Offer some space. If anger has been directed at you, offer your partner some space. Anger can come from resentment quickly, and if your spouse is constantly expressing anger toward you, it may be necessary to give said partner some space. Even your body language can indicate that you are irritable and angry. Giving one another space can help avoid showing that you are irritable and angry alongside your partner through body language and other nonverbal communication.
- Try to remain calm. Anger can quickly flare and escalate if two parties are expressing anger at the same time. Yelling, name-calling, and even physical aggression can occur if one person grows angry and quickly meets another person’s tidal wave of anger. When an angry person greets you, try to be moderate in your own responses.
- Create boundaries for yourself and your relationship with the angry person. Creating boundaries can help you keep yourself safe while maintaining your mental health. If you are constantly confronted by an angry person or you are constantly told that you are causing the anger in question, whether that angry person is an irate repeat customer or a beloved partner, it is perfectly appropriate to create boundaries, such as saying, “I do not feel comfortable discussing this right now. Let’s take a few minutes and talk about it when we’ve gotten some distance from the subject.”
Although anger is a perfectly normal and healthy emotion, it can present an issue if an angry person never seems to let up or uses anger to tear other people down. If you are constantly dealing with an angry person or angry people, use some of the tactics above to maintain your mental health and effectively manage interactions with angry people.
How does anger impact a marriage?
Anger can quickly and easily become toxic to a marriage. Although anger is a normal emotion, and healthy emotional expression is a fundamental part of maintaining personal mental health and the health of your relationship, if it goes unchecked, anger can become an issue and can negatively impact relationships. Healthy emotional expression can strengthen the bonds and trust between husbands and wives and reveal convictions.
When expressed inappropriately, however, anger can damage a marriage in the following ways:
- Trust can be eroded. Outbursts of anger can quickly erode the trust in marriage because one or both partners can feel as though they are constantly on the verge of a fight or are constantly being belittled. If communication is frequently being met with anger—or behavior is frequently met with anger—the partner experiencing the anger will likely begin to feel trepidation or fear about communicating or even simply being with the angry partner. Being in an intimate relationship with an angry person inflates existing issues and destroys trust.
- Resentment can be fueled. If one partner in a marriage shows constant anger, the other partner can easily grow resentful. If it feels as though one-half of the relationship is constantly responsible for maintaining an atmosphere of kindness and consideration in the home, they may feel they are facing a far too heavy burden.
- Guilt and shame can quickly compound. Anger is the perfect fuel to the fire of guilt and shame. In a marriage, anger can readily lead to guilt and shame because constantly having anger directed at you can make you feel as though you are constantly wrong or are perpetually flawed. This can lead to feelings of guilt regarding your seeming inability to please your spouse and shame about your supposed failure to manage your marriage.
Anger is a useful, healthy emotion when it is moderated and expressed appropriately. When anger is your default, however, and you have constant anger issues, it can quickly place a lot of strain on your relationships, including your marriage. Imagine living with someone who is perpetually angry, irritable, or easily upset, and you can likely see that this situation is painful and exhausting. Constant anger is not healthy for an individual, nor is it healthy for a marriage.
Therapy is personal
Keeping this in mind can ensure that you will get the most out of online therapy, regardless of what your specific goals are. If you’re still wondering if therapy is right for you, and how much therapy costs, please contact us at contact@betterhelp.com. BetterHelp specializes in online therapy to help address all types of mental health concerns. If you’re interested in individual therapy, reach out today to get started.
For more information about BetterHelp as a company:
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