From the "things I already knew" file: Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that spouses who express their anger tend to live longer than couples who bottle it up.
Or it just seems like it, yuk yuk.
Professor Ernest Harburg and his colleagues followed 192 married couples over a 17-year period. Their research focused on aggressive behavior considered unfair or undeserved by the person on the receiving end. The spouses ranged in age from 35 to 69.
Harburg placed couples into one of four categories, based on how they responded to anger-provoking hypothetical situations: both partners express their anger; the wife expresses anger or the husband does, while the other suppresses; and both the husband and wife suppress anger.
Only 26 couples, meaning 52 individuals, in the study were "suppressors" in which both partners held in their anger. A quarter of them died during the study period compared with about half that for the remaining couples.
The study didn’t look at styles of expressing anger or of suppressing, just whether people tended to do one or the other, and didn't delve into differing styles, like when what one partner considers a major blowout the other considers healthy communication.
We're teaching our daughter to clearly state when she's angry, and explain to her it's fine to be angry, but not to hit or be mean because of it. How do you attempt to model healthy "anger styles"?
