Why Do Men Often Seem So Angry?

For some men, anger is the emotion they are most familiar with. Ask one of these men how he feels and you are likely to get a puzzled expression, unless, of course, he is angry, in which case he is often quite clear about how he feels. Some families have adapted strategies over the years to either avoid or manage men’s unacknowledged anger.

Of course, men do have emotions other than anger, but anger is sometimes the only socially acceptable emotion for men. There are numerous social prohibitions against men expressing emotions other than anger, and considerable social reinforcement for being angry. Some think of men who are angry as powerful and more masculine, and men who express sadness or fearas weak and less masculine.

Jackson Katz (2006), the author of The Macho Paradox, wrote that “Countless men deal with their vulnerability by transferring vulnerable feelings to feelings of anger. The anger then serves to ‘prove’ that they are not, in fact, vulnerable, which would imply they are not man enough to take the pressure.”

Women are often socialized to direct their anger inward towards themselves and to believe that open expressions of anger are not feminine. Men are often socialized to express their anger overtly and to use their anger to control their partners and their own emotional experience. Anger appeals to men because they can be angry and still remain well-defended and not vulnerable. Being angry not only helps some men feel more in control of their own emotional experience, but some men also use anger in an attempt to control their partner’s expression of feeling as well.

Some men get emotionally activated when their wives or partners are more emotional, so they often use anger to control their partners’ expressions of emotions as well as their own. As a result, anger becomes the go-to emotion for many men, the default feeling they are most familiar and comfortable with. Other feelings are either suppressed or hidden beneath their anger.

Although anger has gotten a bad name in our culture, anger itself is not a problem. In its simplest form, anger is just a way of letting someone know that you are not happy with the way things are going between you and that you want to find a way to make things better. Anger becomes a problem in relationships when it is either not expressed or acted out rather than discussed and resolved.

In some instances, men go to the familiar experience of anger to hide from themselves and others what they are really feeling. What men most often feel underneath their anger is fear. Men get angry to cover their fear.

See if you recognize yourself in any of these everyday situations:

• Your anger that your wife or partner spends so much time texting and talking on the phone with friends might mask your fears that she might not enjoy talking with you as much as she does with her friends.
• Your anger at your wife for coming home late from work and bringing work home with her might mask envy and fear about being less successful than her.
• Your anger at being constantly criticized by your partner, to the point where you can’t seem to get it right, might mask your fear of not being able to please her.
• Your anger that the kids always come first with your partner, and she never seems to have any time for you, may mask your fear that you don’t really know how to have the kind of close relationship that she has with the kids.

Once you begin to recognize some of the deeper fears underlying your anger, you may consider the truly intimate act of discussing your fears with your wife or partner. This act of loving vulnerability may be very frightening to consider, but the rewards often far outweigh the risks.

This post is excerpted, in part, from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.