My husband threw my carrots away yesterday.

Yes, my carrots. We’ve been doing “his-and-hers” meal plan since the beginning of the year where we’re each responsible for our own meals. It’s awesome actually and I should probably write an essay about how great it’s been. But yes, my carrots.

Anyway, those were the carrots that I’d planned to use in my “what-I’ve-got-in-the-fridge” mason jar salads for lunch this week and when I went in the drawer and they weren’t there, I was not pleased.

“Did you throw my carrots away?” I said to my husband, knowing the answer is yes. He was sitting on the couch facing the kitchen and had this “ooo, yep, oops, sorry” look on his face.

I was pissed. And I let him have it. I raised my voice, yelling about the carrots and why did you have to throw away my carrots, they were good, I just bought them last week and you left the old carrots in there and why didn’t you throw away YOUR leftovers. You’ve got old turkey and green beans in there. I pulled out said turkey and green beans and put them on the counter. I was huffing and puffing and banging things.

It. felt. awesome. As the words were coming out of my mouth I felt so powerful. Slightly bad that I was yelling over carrots but also so good and so powerful because I was honoring my anger. Allowing it to be ok. My. anger. I felt super grounded in this booming voice that was coming out of me. I was cognizant of it and what I was doing, I was not at the affect of it.

Shortly into the banging Mike went into the bedroom and closed the door. I didn’t care. I could tell he wasn’t getting triggered, wasn’t taking it personally. He was simply getting away from my yelling. Good for him. He doesn’t need to sit there and listen to me scream and bang things around. I felt kind of bad that I let him have it but also not.

After a few minutes I went in the bedroom and got in bed next to him as a “I still love you, rant over” peace offering and it was all fine.

This whole thing lasted for about 10 minutes but it’s left a lasting impression on me. What I take away most from this experience was how good my anger felt and how cathartic it was to own it and let it be. Also, that I was angry, expressed that, and it wasn’t damaging or scary. I should note here that I’m really lucky that this crazy yelling didn’t trigger my husband. Things may have gone very differently if it did.

So this begs two questions:

1) how can I continue to own my anger and express it in the future?

2) how can I react similar to how Mike reacted? Not scared by anger and not taking it personally.

 

Something to note: In my yelling, I didn’t make any accusations about Mike as a person. I was simply yelling about the action of the carrots being thrown away. We’ve learned in our marriage not to use absolutes like “you always” or “you never” in arguments and we don’t attack the person’s character.

 

Here’s another post about things a significant other might do and how to handle them.