How To Manage Your Anger When You’re Fighting With Your Partner

I don’t like conflict. Who does?

Oh, God, I hate fighting with my husband. Not the bickering (although sometimes it starts off like that) but the real, hard, painful, values pinching type of fights.

The thought of fighting makes me want to crawl into a cave and wait for everything to settle down.

I don’t want to talk about the issues.

I don’t want to share my feelings.

I don’t want to experience that struggle where I want to explode and say all the mean things that I have in my head but I know I shouldn’t because I can never take back those words and I’ll just regret hurting his feelings.

I don’t want to practice empathy, listening to his side, being patient, understanding and seeing it from his perspective.

I don’t want to cry and have that puffy face the next morning where I feel like my heart took a beating and my soul has been sucked dry. And then have that awkward moment where I see him, and I avoid eye contact because I don’t want to be the first to say something.