Anger Schmanger

We don't do anger well in this family. I was reminded of this fact two days ago when Craig and I had a minor upset over one of those robotized phone calls. The robot from Direct TV called asking to confirm an appointment that I did not know about. I could not confirm, was vaguely afraid of confirming some kind of expensive upgrade and said: I don't know. The robot interepreted that as "no". The appointment was cancelled. When Craig found out, he was angry with me because he had spent a week arranging the thing. You would think that the company would know that meant he really wanted the appointment, but no, they had to have their robot call to confirm. Anyways, he was mad at me and that upset me because I could not tolerate his anger and I started feeling stupid that I had not figured it out at the time. His anger was really a brief flash, no yelling, no breakage, no words really were involved. But I was deeply offended and truly embarrassed and my reaction got out of hand. A few hours later, yes, it took a few hours including a dunk in the hot tub to settle down, Craig said we do not know how to fight. That is my point in saying our family does not do anger well. The kids will have to weigh in on this, but it is my observation that they also do not do anger well because of this big lack in parenting. It's along the lines of teaching them to drive which will be another blog. The result of not doing anger well is avoiding confrontations. In some ways I think we try to be kind to each other which is never a bad thing. I discovered very late in my children's lives that if I scratch their backs while asking intrusive questions, they seem to respond and forget to be angry with my nosiness. So we did not teach them about properly expressing anger, fighting and living to tell etc. I am sure that this has it's effects on their relationships.