Ephesians 4:26: Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.
Proverbs 15:1: A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:2: The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
Women have a reputation of being emotionally wiser than men, of having a wider emotional palette than men. I dispute both, but not so that I can diminish women and elevate men… and don’t keep that accusation alive in the face of what I want to discuss today. Men and women are not the same and pretending they are is folly.
Whenever I say that men are prone to give a monochromatic blaze from multispectral anguish, men go cross-eyed and either make guttural noises of annoyance or twist up their faces questioning my sanity… or both. I do that on purpose to get their attention, making them wonder “What did this lunatic just say?” Then I’ve got them. (Gleeful cackle ensues)
Monochromatic = one color.
Blaze = emotional response akin to anger.
Multispectral = many colors.
Anguish speaks to the inner emotion that sparks that aforementioned monochromatic blaze.
And put it all together and you get “Men tend to respond with anger to a wide variety of negative emotions.” You are now asking yourself why I didn’t just say that in the first place.
The male emotional landscape is no less dazzling than the average female’s. We all have the same emotions with all the same subtle variations.
But the way men are inclined (I refuse to qualify every statement with the obvious observation that “inclination” allows for some variety and overlap, so get over it. ) So, the way men are inclined to deal with subtle emotional variance does differ from the average female’s inclination. It has been long noted that men have a more natural capacity for compartmentalization than women, and that women have a more natural capacity for juggling everything all at once. Each to their divine gift. This is why, no matter how much some people like to pretend otherwise, traditional family roles are not easily or efficiently switched around as we please.
The male mind is like a closet full of boxes. Those boxes do not always have the best labels, but they do keep things separate from each other and stored away until needed… or until they explode. “I’ll deal with this. Then I’ll deal with that. And this other thing does not help anybody right now, so I will put it away and try to never deal with it again. There are problems to solve, tasks to be managed, and I don’t have the luxury of pushing everything else aside to deal with that. Let’s move on.”
The female mind is more like your favorite junk drawer… if it also contained everything important and unimportant and not just miscellaneous doodads that you didn’t know what else to do with.
I remember the story of a husband sitting at a diner with his wife waiting for food. Out of curiosity and to kill time he turned over the diner’s paper placemat and slid it to his wife with the standard three-colored crayon set provided with them. He said, “I want you to write down everything that is worrying around inside your head right now.” She did, but it would have been better if she had the full 152 count ultimate crayon collection from Crayola.
In Harry Potter (yeah, yeah, I know, many Christians have little tolerance for fantasy fiction), Hermione Granger is explaining to Harry and Ron why Cho cried while she kissed Harry. She says, “Don’t you understand how she must be feeling? Obviously, she’s feeling sad about Cedric. And therefore, confused about liking Harry, and guilty about kissing him. Conflicted because Umbridge is threatening to sack her mum from her job at the Ministry and… frightened of failing her OWLs (i.e. upcoming exams) because she’s so busy worrying about everything else.” Ron replies scoffing, “One person couldn’t feel all of that. They’ll explode.” Hermione responds, “Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon…”[1]
But men do not have the emotional range of teaspoons just because they are inclined to a compartmentalization approach to emotions—which benefits rational problem solving—any more than women are emotionally wiser for their inclination toward an “Everything Everywhere All at Once” approach—which benefits emotional thinking and managing household chaos.[2] Each to his or her divine task. Men are not lesser because they stuff bad feelings down when they get in the way of fulfilling life’s duties and women are not more because they tend to filter most of their decision making through a tangle of conflicting emotions. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.
But I have discovered this when it comes to the struggle that men have regarding “anger.” It is easier to control angry impulses, if men discipline themselves to give the same compartmentalized attention that they give to video games, hunting elk, and building houses, to asking themselves, “Why am I angry?”
Here is what I discovered about myself.
Fear = anger.
Frustration = anger.
Feeling disrespected = anger.
Feeling unloved = anger.
Feeling jealous (perceived possession or right threatened) = anger.
Feeling envy (desire to have what belongs to someone else) = anger.
Let’s speed this up even though you are unlikely to read the details in this thick paragraph: Dismissed, belittled, mocked, insulted; undermined, talked-over, patronized, “emasculated,” shamed; ashamed; controlled, manipulated, cornered, micromanaged, trapped, powerless, coerced, blindsided, interrupted; perceived injustice generally, betrayed, cheated, lied to, gaslit, scapegoated, unfairly blamed, victim of double standards; threatened, worried, uncertain, unsafe, overwhelmed, startled; fear of failure, threat to livelihood or reputation; embarrassment, humiliation, feeling exposed, feeling ridiculed; Failure spotlighted; loss of face; rejection & neglect, ignored, excluded, abandoned, taken for granted, unacknowledged; responding to rivalry, favoritism; feeling “less than”; blocked from goals, stonewalled, stalled; dealing with incompetence, hypocrisy, bureaucracy, inefficiency, dishonesty, or repeated setbacks; feeling incompetent; disappointed; violated; Moral outrage, violated codes, bruised convictions, dishonor to faith, family, country; strain & depletion, exhausted, hungry (“hangry”), in pain, overstimulated; chronic stress, financial pressure; lonely; loss & grief; regret; sadness; insecurity & inadequacy; exposed as an imposter; disgust & contempt, revulsion at perceived filth, deceit, cowardice… All = Anger. I know you didn’t read all that, but I hope you get the point.
While women often struggle to confront their perpetual discontent and unease surrounding it with a host of flailing words and buzzing thoughts as they try to sort it out, men struggle to put words to their feelings at all. They just lash out or shut down.
So, again, here is something that has helped me when I’ve chosen to discipline myself enough to do it.
I try to stop my angry impulse before my mouth opens, before I check out, avoid, and shut down… I ask myself, “Why am I so angry right now?” If I can answer that, it gives me appropriate words to replace ugly ones. It makes me engage rather than evade and turn off. It helps me explain myself to others in a more productive way.
Ephesians 4:26: Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.
Proverbs 15:1: A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:2: The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix (2007) https://youtu.be/r94aUPdPgzk
[2] You can fuss if you like that I said that, but our modern American role confusion and it’s fallout stands in opposition to millennia of functioning households.