Preventing a Hostile Takeover

“Love is not easily angered”

(1 Corinthians 13:5)

Two young women who had both recently gotten married got together for coffee.  Wanting to know if her experience was unique, the first woman asked her friend: “Now that you’re married, do you find that you wake up grumpy?”  To this her friend replied, “No, most mornings I just leave him sleeping.”  All kidding aside, anger does become a major issue in many marriages and can take root in the life of either spouse.

Over the past several years I have worked with several individuals who have said something like this: “I never used to be an angry person until I got married, but now I find myself saying things and doing things I would have never imagined.”  The painful reality may be that the anger was there all along, but it took the daily challenges of a marriage to reveal it.  Be that as it may, the question that remains is how to overcome these angry tendencies.

As Christians we know that we are supposed to be slow to become angry (James 1:21), but how exactly do we do this?  The reality is that marriage provides us with many occasions where we will be tempted to respond with anger – everything from minor annoyances to major blunders.  When anger becomes the default response to these things, the relationship loses all sense of intimacy and the home becomes a place where spouses tiptoe around each other not wanting to set off another firestorm of conflict.   Left in this state, many marriages deteriorate into a predictable pattern of minor skirmishes which turn into major battles, which are followed by negotiated cease fires, and then the cycle begins again.  But this is a downward spiral and there is a better way.  The following three principles are a starting place for a biblical way of dealing with anger in our lives and preventing hostile takeovers in our marriages.

1.  Look inward.  “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?” (James 4:1).  As much as our natural first tendency is to look at our spouse and what they have done wrong, our first response should be to look at our own hearts and try to figure out why it is that we are really so bothered.  It could be that there is some legitimate failing on the part of our spouse, but it could also be that there is an unhealthy desire or unrealistic expectation we are expecting our spouse to meet.

2.  Look upward. “The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love” (Psalm 145:8).  As followers of Jesus, we ought to seek to emulate His character.  Ultimately we are only able to truly forgive as we understand the extent to which God in His grace has forgiven us.  In the same way, we will only be able to deal with our anger towards others to the extent that we understand that God is slow to anger towards us.

3.  Look forward.  “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27).  Applying this verse in the marriage context does not mean that every conflict needs to be completely resolved before you turn out the light, but it does remind us that if we allow our anger to stew too long it will eventually take root.  We need to look forward to see what the eventual outcome of a pattern of anger will produce.  This is a verse we have taken to heart in our marriage and one of the practices we have adopted when we have had unresolved conflict before going to bed is to give reassurance of our love for one another, and agree to work through the issue the next day.  It’s amazing how different things can look in the light of a new day.