Reaching Up...the column by Dr. Rosen

When Anger Isn't A Rejection by Dr. Jim Rosen © 2008 Dr. Jim Rosen When your significant other is angry with you and pulls away from you, it may look like rejection, but it probably isn't. Your partner could be feeling angry because at a deeper level he/she yearns to be close to you.

Our human emotions occur in layers. At the deepest layer is the need for self-worth and love. We all have the need to feel loved and worthwhile. We need to know that the person we love the most appreciates us and has good loving feelings toward us. We yearn to be loved and accepted for who we are. We would like to believe that we are totally independent beings, but we cannot escape the fact that we derive a certain amount of our self-worth from the person we love the most.

When you say or do something that makes your partner think that you're withdrawing your love, it threatens his/her self-worth. Maybe you are pulling away your love and showing disapproval. Maybe you're not, but he/she just takes it that way. In either case, it feels like a threat to your partner. And that's when the other layers of emotion shoot to the surface.

Just above the need for love and self-worth, there is a layer of emptiness. In other words, when your partner's self-worth is threatened, he/she feels empty inside. It seems like a cavernous hole where something is missing. He may not realize that he's feeling empty; he may not be that aware of his emotions; he may not know the words for what he is feeling. Or like many people, he may automatically react with one of the other emotions at the upper layers.

For instance, above the emptiness there is a layer of fear -- fear that he's going to lose your love, fear that he'll never get the love he needs, fear that you don't really care about him. (These fears need not be true for him to feel this way.)

Above the fear is a layer of hurt. The emotion of hurt always comes with the belief that "There must be something wrong with me. I'll never be good enough or adequate enough to deserve your love." This belief may be unconscious or outside his awareness, but it is there.

And at the very top, above the hurt-fear-emptiness, is a layer of anger. With anger he/she lashes out at the person who seems to be attacking his self-worth. Of course this is you. He strikes out at the one whose love he needs the most. His anger is an attempt to gain control of something he feels he is not in control of. The anger is a cover-up. It temporarily covers or masks the other painful emotions.

The need for self-worth and love is deep ...and very human. Then come emptiness-fear-hurt-anger in that order. Each layer of emotion covers up the layers below it. Fear covers up the more painful feeling of emptiness; hurt covers up the fear and the emptiness, and so on.

Although he may be unaware of the deeper feelings, these layers of emotion come as a package. Whenever he is feeling angry, you can be sure that beneath his anger he is also experiencing the hurt, fear and emptiness. And you can be sure that at the deepest level he is yearning for your love. The anger is up there on the surface, because the need for your love is down there in his heart and gut.

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