Q: I went through several of your past posts that led me to your article on Intervention. I started thinking about the interactions with my wife. Every few days, we have a question and answer session about something that is nothing, but made to be an affair or deceit on my part. It usually ends with, “it will come out in the end” or “it will come out in court”. Our conversations don’t go anywhere. They have the same pattern – anger, yelling, sarcasm, threats, blame etc. When I confront, most of the time, I heard statements like “I don’t remember” or “I didn’t say that” or just plain denial which then leads to the anger, yelling,  etc . People from my church have been having conversations with my wife. They report that there has been little success in the conversations, all having the same elements with me being blamed for everything, my past sins being brought up as present day and no personal responsibility for her own actions. I know that I stopped being listened to and heard a long time ago. I am starting to find that others aren’t being listened to either. I believe my wife may be going through the stages of delusion discussed in the Intervention document, somewhere between stages 3 and 4. I am running out of options. I see intervention as my last hope. Will it work for anger?

A: Anger is based in hurt and pain. When a person expresses anger, it may be toward the person with whom the pain is associated, or it may be toward someone just because he is close by and an easy target. Though I am not a therapist or counselor (web sites continually get that wrong and describe me as a marriage counselor), I know that effective therapists don’t ask, “What are you angry about?” but instead ask, “Where do you hurt?” If they can get to the base of the pain, they find the base of the anger.

Can anger be an addiction? Read this quote from the Anger Management Training Institute, “…in the same way that some people embrace drugs or alcohol or eating or sex to get a temporary reduction in their level of emotional pain, others simply wrap themselves in an impermeable cloak of anger that protects them and gives them a short-lived sense of power over all threats, real and imagined. Once this pernicious relationship with anger has been hardwired into the addictive mechanisms of the brain, getting an anger addict to talk about not getting angry anymore works about as well as getting an alcoholic to talk about not drinking anymore.” They, and others who write about anger, sometimes refer to it as rageaholism. So, yes, it appears that at least some in the therapeutic fields see anger itself as an addiction, even though based on some inner pain.

As you saw in the Intervention document, interventions are best done not by the spouse him- herself but by those that are trusted by the person who needs the intervention. You refer to people from your church. If that means your wife goes to another church, or has a different set of people in whom she has confidence, you will need to find your intervention team from those people. Interventions from people who aren’t known well or who are virtual strangers typically get a “what gives you the right to put your nose in my business” kind of response.

Because I am not an anger expert, I am not the best source to figure how to do this. However, I’m sure that a Google Trip will find plenty of resources in your local area, as well as great information from experts around the world.

No one can live a lifetime of being berated, chastised, impugned, and maligned. At least no one can live a happy lifetime, or even a fulfilling lifetime, when constantly targeted by anger from an individual. My friend Willard Harley calls it a love buster: He writes that continual angry outbursts eventually destroy love completely.

Of course, we are thinking totally from your point of view. If you were doing those things that your wife accuses you of, my answer would be very different…aimed at you rather than her.