Fathers
Expressing Excessive Anger in the Home: Its Destructive Impact
on Families
In
my years of clinical practice, I have seen many examples of family
systems wherein men feel all too comfortable expressing anger
in the home. While some men fully realize that the home must be
maintained as a sanctuary, void of any aggression or hostility,
too many men have been brought into a “best friend”
relationship with their wives, and feel that they have a right
to express themselves fully. By spending an enormous amount of
time in the home, men sometimes compete with their wives to be
the best mothers they can be. Unfortunately, thousands of generations
have made men the testosterone-driven men that they are. As such,
they are prone to angry outbursts. Sadly, as men are spending
more and more time in the home, these angry outbursts are increasingly
occurring with their wives.
Angry
men infect family systems in much the way that dye-colored water
is drawn up the stem of a plant, turning the leaves the color
of the dye. Men need to take far greater care in preserving their
homes as a sanctuary and expressing their anger and/or profanity
with their male friends, outside the home. In some situations,
young boys may become the protectors of their mothers, vis-à-vis
their angry father’s verbal abuse of their mothers. In such
cases, some boys never relinquish their oedipal ties to their
mother, and can be propelled to a homosexual solution in order
to avoid “cheating on their mothers”.
The
lesson in this is quite clear: men must see themselves as too
powerful to express anger in the home. They must be viewed by
their wives and their children as protectors, not dangerous figures
themselves.
November
2003
