anger – HampoLand

Stupid Men and Mind Games

Men and women are both stupid and so different. This becomes painfully apparent every time I get mad at a man.

When Alex gets upset with me he generally walks away, starts reading or watches a dumb CSI type tv show.

When I get mad I let him know it. I do crazy things to show him how up set and angry I am.

I don’t set up the coffee pot, so it’s not ready for him in the morning. (So Evil)

I don’t fold his clean laundry, instead I leave it in a heaping pile on his dresser.

I move all the good pillows to my side of the bed when he’s not paying attention.

Wicked right?

I have a good friend who happens to be a man and I get mad at him ALL THE TIME! When I’m mad and he texts me…I send back one word answers. I put stuff on his desk without talking to him.

I feel as though my red hot seething lava like anger is so obvious, they would have to be absolute idiots not to notice. But guess what? The men in my life never ever notice my angry gestures. The empty coffee pot means nothing to Alex. He might grumble about it but he never connects it to my anger. He just figures I forgot.

Women, if you are mad at a man, he’ll never know unless you do one of two things. 1. Tell him 2. Break his windshield with a cinder block….then tell him.

If you stop talking to him, burn his toast or leave the room every time he walks in…he will not make the connection. He’ll just think you’re having hormone problems and want to be left alone.

The strange thing is, women never play these stupid emotional mind games with children. If we are mad at our kids….we tell them….instantly. We don’t give them soggy cereal or show up late for their games, we don’t give them the silent treatment….we tell them what we expect, what they did wrong and then we move on….we get over it. Why do we play coy games with our men but not our children?

The truth is, most guys just don’t get it…Or maybe they do and evolution has changed their DNA. Maybe over thousands of years they’ve come to realize there’s absolutely nothing they can do to appease us when we are ticked off.

We think they don’t talk to us enough, they aren’t romantic enough, they don’t appreciate us enough, they don’t spend enough time with us. Guys think all these requests are kind of pathetic and they have no intention of changing.

DNA and life experience has taught them, they can’t rationalize with an angry woman, so they might as well find a bad tv show, figure out how to make the coffee and fold their own laundry.

I Can’t Hold A Grudge Anymore…What a Wuss

I’ve lost my touch. Years ago I didn’t just “hold a grudge”, I fed it and rocked it to sleep. If I got mad at someone, I was absolutely brutal and didn’t have any problem cutting them out of my life with a scalpel.

I was never ugly, I didn’t speak poorly of folks I was mad at or who hurt me. I simply acted as though they didn’t exsist. They became invisible to me.

Before you start lecturing me on forgiveness let my assure you I know how damning and detrimental anger can be . I know WAY BETER THAN ANYONE ELSE that I was hurting myself and punishing myself with this absurd behaviour. I KNOW so please don’t tell me about the importance of forgiveness. You think I don’t know that? Hell yeah, I know holding a grudge and not forgiving people makes you sick inside and out, it eats at you….etc… I’m stubborn and petty but I’m not stupid.

But I’ve lost the touch. I’m such a wimp now I can’t stay mad at people anymore, even if they really really hurt me. Even when I’m mad I know I still love them. And eventually, I relent, say, “what the hell” and drop the grudge. I realized this the other day when I caught myself smiling while thinking about someone who hurt me. I was smiling and that felt good so all of a sudden I decided I wasn’t going to be pissed off any more. Suddenly, the tilted table, the see-saw, the scale, they all felt balanced and I felt really good.

I think part of the problem has to do with cell phones. Fifteen years ago it was so easy to avoid the offender who hurt your feelings. They couldn’t reach out to me when I was in the car or working out. All I had to do was refuse to pick up the phone at home and they were out of my life.

Now, because of cell phones, you can call me and text me all the time (I have a ancient cell phone so I can’t block numbers). You can send me a text that just says, “I really miss you”. That tells me your thinking about me and my hard heart starts to thaw.

I’m kind of disappointed in myself but I’m also relieved Holding a grudge and dropping people like dirty socks takes a lot of effort. Yeah, I still get mad, I get crazy smokin’ hot mad. And like everyone on the planet, I get my feelings hurt when you say or do something mean. But if I get mad at you, just a wait a couple of weeks and chance are I’ll get over it or, I’ll miss you so much that I will decide to keep you in my life even though you are an ass.

And hopefully, when I really tick you off and make you made you will do the same.

*if you have a hot temper let me know, if you think I’m an idiot, please let me know. Send me an email at hampoland@gmail.com, leave a comment, hit the rss button at the bottom. Anything so I know you’re out there. Thanks, DH

My Terrible Temper Vs The Swifter

Last week I almost lost my temper. That frustrates and scares me because good Lord, I have a ridiculous, stupid temper.

Inevitable, when I do loose control and get really mad I do absurd and self destructive stuff. I melt down completely and make myself look like a complete ass. And for days afterwards, I feel physically ill. So, I try very very hard not to get smokin’ hot mad.

One day, a few years ago, I got mad at my Swifter while I was trying to clean house. Alex rolled up the driveway in his big blue truck and I was slamming the Swifter against a giant oak tree. There were tiny pieces of plastic all over the yard. But I just couldn’t stop.

When Jack was ten or twelve we had our first go-rounds over rap music. I thought it was filthy, racist and sexist and I told him he shouldn’t have such dark thoughts rolling around in his head or in my house.

Because twelve year old boys make lots of mistakes, Jack put on a CD, I think it was NWA, I heard it, walked in his room picked up his cd player and slammed it down on the tile floor. Again, I was surrounded by lots of little pieces of plastic. An hour latter I was calm enough to apologize and he did too. And a few days latter Jack and I split the cost of a new CD player.

Sometimes I wonder if a bad temper is genetic because lots of folks in my family had them. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have passed the gene on to my kiddos.

Obviously, the correct move in this situation would have been to take his CD player away for a week. Of course I know that.

When I feel the rage building I generally do one of two things. If I’m with the kids I tell them to leave me alone, immediately. I make sure they are out of the house or in their room. If I’m with adults I simply remove myself from the situation, I walk out. And when I walk, it may look really rude, but I’m trying to save my self.

For the past three weeks a man at work thought I did something to hurt his career. I didn’t do it. I explained that I simply didn’t do it and I apologized for the situation. He didn’t hear a word I said and kept insisting that everyone was out to get him. (The truth is we all liked him a whole bunch).

For three weeks he was cold and rude to me but I figured he would get over it, eventually. Then my boss made us sit down to talk it out. Ok, I was fine with that, but the man launched into a condescending attack complete with finger pointing. I felt that sick, hot rage building so I simply walked out in the middle of his tirade.

If I didn’t get out, I knew I would have picked up his computer monitor or the staple gun sitting on his desk, and thrown it through the window and then quit my job. All of this absurd behaviour would have been very bad…FOR ME.

Finger pointing always gets to me in a negative way. Once a teenage boy was putting his finger in my face and I told him if he didn’t move it I would snap it off and eat it. We are still friends but he never did that again.

I don’t loose my temper very much any more. I work at it. Because I know I only end up hurting myself and I hate having to apologize. And I still miss my Swifter.