Anger was a big problem in my marriage--my anger, his anger, and our different and incompatible ways of dealing (or not dealing) with it. And guess what: even though the marriage is over, I still trip over this problem. Sometimes the wrinkle in the rug is my anger; sometimes it's someone else's. Here is a quote I found a while back. I keep returning to it to let the same lesson settle in. It's from Harriet Goldhor Lerner's The Dance of Anger. "Most of us want the impossible. We want to control not only our own decisions and choices but also the other person's reactions to them. We not only want to make a change; we want the other person to like the change that we make. We want to move ahead to a higher level of assertiveness and clarity and then receive praise and reinforcement from those very people who have chosen us for our own familiar ways" (Lerner, page 35 italics in original)
.This quote intersects perfectly with what I hope I'm learning about control. That is, the only thing I can hope to control is my own behavior, my own attitude. I can't even always do that. Or maybe I could, if I were very careful and very clear. I certainly can't control what other people think or feel or do or write or gossip about any more than I can control the weather. If I tried I will probably exhaust myself and frustrate myself. And come to think of it, controlling my behavior and attitude is a big enough job for the rest of my life.
On one hand, I could get frustrated that I can't control what someone says or does or feels. Instead, I'm choosing to feel relief that I can stop trying.
