Anger can obstruct, erode, or even demolish relational intimacy. And anger can also enhance such intimacy, particularly when it is engaged in the context of spiritual practice. As much as anger’s fire can injuriously burn, it can also illuminate -- it all depends on what kind of relationship with anger we cultivate.

F. Rassouli ( www.rassouli.com )

Relationships that are stuck in anger-fueled power struggles are often sustained by a mutual bargaining (for example: “I won’t complain about your drinking if you’ll stop trying to have sex with me”). Far-from-sacred contracts these are, at best being ways to maintain the status quo, to take care of business. However, to go beyond treating relationship as business, or as something merely to negotiate our way through, relationship needs to become conscious, or infused by a mutual, ongoing commitment to uncovering, exploring, and awakening from the neurotic rituals habitually animated by both partners.

Essential to this is a responsibly expressed sharing of our inner workings (and also of our resistance to doing so!), including our intentions and emotional states. Anger then is not necessarily kept to oneself, declawed, muted, nor reduced to an angerless report, but may be -- under appropriate conditions -- openly and aptly shown and shared, not just as content, but also, to varying degrees, as energy, raw energy.

The heat of our preferences -- how easily they stir up anger, while our mind, apparently uninvited, tosses in its commentary: Should I take my anger seriously? Should I wait until it passes? Should I express it directly, right now, or should I maybe reword it a little? Why is this happening to me? It is definitely your fault -- why shouldn’t I be angry at you? I guess my spiritual practice isn’t what I thought -- but would I be getting angry if you were treating me better? My thoughts are kerosene. Observe the sensations and the intentions, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale -- damn, this is not working! I promised myself I wouldn’t lose control again, and here I am, already losing it!

And so on. Intimacy may catalyze the surfacing of judgments (in the sense of negative evaluations) and reactive tendencies that might have otherwise gone undetected. We may mask such judgments, but we cannot completely conceal the feeling of them. The feeling of them cuts into our partners, generating hurt, distance, confusion, and fear -- unless we can quickly, honestly, and caringly share the feelings housed at the heart of such judgment, including those for which we have the most aversion.

How very easy it is be angry at our anger (“When will I be free of this damn anger?”), rejecting of our rage. Given the frequently harmful consequences of acted-out anger (epitomized by violent behavior), as well as the often unpleasantly gripping intensity of the sensations that commonly characterize anger, it is understandable that we might want to distance ourselves from our (and/or others’) anger, or at least from the actual feeling of anger. Unfortunately, such distancing tends to reduce anger to little more than just some sort of apparently noxious or otherwise undesirable substance for which there may seem to be no other suitable remedy (or use) than domestication, muzzling, neutering, or outright elimination.

However, instead of getting beyond anger or removing ourselves from it, we need to become more intimate with it -- but how can we do this if we will only examine our anger from a distance (anger-in), or insist on emptying ourselves of its energies when it arises (anger-out)? Intimacy with our anger can enhance self-knowledge, integrity, relational depth, and spiritual maturation, providing both heat and light for what needs to be done, helping us to embody a passion as potently alive as it is responsible, as we learn the art of being angry with an open -- or committed-to-being-open -- heart.

Brian and Tina are at a stalemate. Both are very articulate and insightful, yet they are stuck. Their knowledge -- both are therapists -- does not seem to be making any difference. He wants more commitment from her, she wants less pressure from him, and both are unhappy. She says she feels guilty about her lack of commitment to being with him, so we talk about her guilt and its roots, but still there is little life in the room. They are both clearly angry and very much under control. Firmly in position, armed in their attempted openness, trying to be non-combative in their combativeness. The stage is set. “Face each other,” I say, “and keep eye contact.” Tina briefly raises her hands slightly, palms out, smiles, and delivers some more dead-end insight. “Do that again with your hands,” I say, “and breathe deeper.” She grins. I see a flash of shame. Her hands are sliding up and down her thighs. “What do your hands want to do?” I ask her.

In an instant, her hands are on Brian’s knees, abruptly pushing him back. Immediately, she pulls back, smiling, changing the subject. I ask her what she’s feeling as she smiles, and she says that she’s angry, and that she’s withdrawing from him. The room is tense. We briefly talk about how easily she puts herself down for not wanting to be closer to him; even to give him her anger would be, she says, a kind of giving in. And so on. Brian is hurt, but still very much present. “Let’s try a different tack,” I say. “Tina, I want you to give your anger to Brian as fully as possible, but without any words.” She no longer can smile. I have her hold her a pillow between her hands, to be squeezed as hard as she can. A half minute or so passes. I can see and feel her rage, but she is silent. I ask her where she is most tense, and she says her throat.

Suddenly, she leans forward, screaming at him, her sounds deep and very powerful; she is not acting. Brian looks much more awake -- and caring. Tina is full-blooded in what she is allowing, and is simultaneously very vulnerable. Tears mix with her rage. Less than a minute later, I have her interlock hands with him while she bites down on a towel that I pull on; this loosens her jaw and neck. For a minute or so, she pushes against him, biting very hard, her eyes pure fury and hurt. Then I have her let go of the towel and his hands. Silence, and a deeper silence. Both had complained of not having enough of a soul-connection, but now it is evident that they are plugged into an intimacy that pulsates with spirit-force. He, unlike many men, did not pull back or “disappear” in the face of her raw rage. They are not through their difficulty, but they are now in a place where they are far more capable of getting through it.

The expression of anger and the need to take action are not necessarily the same thing. The direct expression of anger-energy is simply an act of exposure, whereas the need to have events go this way or that has more to do with power and control.

Restricting anger expression to verbal combat keeps it from being as healing a process as it could be if it were to also include the nonverbal expression of undisguised and uncensored anger. When anger is “uncaged” in a suitable and environment at the right time, it often will, after a minute or two of full-throated, full-bodied release, be accompanied by very fitting words, phrasings that potently and succinctly articulate the heart of the matter. Thus can skillfully steered anger-out become more than venting, more than a merely eliminative strategy, eventually mutating, at least to some degree, into heart-anger.

In a truly intimate relationship, the actual intent of one’s anger can, at least some of the time, be safely verbalized, specifically and openly. At times --if there is sufficient trust and mindfulness -- the confession of such intent may need to be also physically expressed (as when anger is particularly intense or gripping) through wringing a towel, pounding a pillow or sofa, or engaging in other similarly nondestructive expressions of such energy. It may even be possible and fruitful, in the presence of mutual caring, to confess the intent of one’s violent urges -- an honest verbalization of our violent intent, if vulnerably and openly expressed, will very quickly defuse such intent, radically lessening our desire to act it out.

To expose one’s violent or outrageously reactive intentions with clarity, vulnerability, and perhaps even some degree of dramatic exaggeration, can be, even though it might appear otherwise, an act of love, providing an inside look at one’s uglier urges, deep anger, and soul-crushing habits. Openly sharing what we are ashamed or afraid of in ourselves can make us not only more intimate with such qualities, but also with each other.

Even so, we may still go to great lengths to avoid exposing or sharing not only the more shameful or embarrassing imperatives of our anger, but also its passion. Getting righteous during our anger may be pointless, but no more so than submitting to our intimate other’s demands (tacit or not) that we not get openly angry, that we spare him or her such raw intensity, that we prove (through suffocating, eviscerating, sterilizing, or at least muting our anger) we are loving, that we, in short, let him or her in this particular situation remain in control, “safely” removed from the heat of our anger.

If we are on the receiving end of anger, particularly hot or wide-open anger, it may be very tempting to deny our intimate others significant access to us, even if their anger is being delivered cleanly. We may interrupt, deflect, or try to detour their intensity of feeling (and/or content), perhaps informing them that they are out of control or behaving irresponsibly, saying in so many words, “Can’t we do this another way?” This apparently reasonable request, however appropriate it might be at times (as when the environment is not supportive of an “uncivilized” exchange, or when anger is being abusively expressed), is usually an avoidance of anger per se, as well as a confession of not being intimate with one’s own anger. That is, if we don’t successfully defuse or mute the other’s anger at us, it might catalyze our own anger into a more active form, and the more opposed we are to this, the more we will tend to oppose, obstruct, or sabotage the other’s direct expression of anger.

We may even -- without raising our voices, of course! -- demand from them in the midst of their anger that they demonstrate that they do indeed love us. To do so may well mean that they have to cease being angry (or at least looking angry), given that our model of love very likely does not include an angry-faced or wrathful love. If anger signals the end or absence of love for us (as it might have in our past), then we are going to have a strong investment in suppressing it, both in ourselves and in others, marooning ourselves from the realization that anger and love can both exist at the same time.

Looking for proof that our angry others are not rejecting us can easily obscure the fact that we may be rejecting them and their anger. Demanding that they show us love (in the way that we think love should look) while they are being angry at us may obscure the realization that we may not be loving them during their exposure of their anger -- we might even be, however unwittingly, punishing them for being angry at us. Our “calm” or “rational” or “spiritual” withdrawal from them when they are angry at us is likely not an act of real caring, but rather one of fear, aversion, or passive aggression. It is so easy to make a virtue out of withheld anger, when such withholding may be just another form of anger. A refusal to openly express one’s anger to one’s partner may in fact constitute a rejection of him or her.

Part of our difficulty here may be that we are still confusing anger with aggression, forgetting that anger is not necessarily the same as aggression. Aggression involves some form of attack, whereas anger may or may not. Aggression is devoid of compassion and vulnerability, but anger, however fiery its delivery might be or might have to be, can be part of an act of caring and vulnerability. Aggression is not so much an outcome of anger, as an avoidance of it and its frequently interpersonal nature and underlying feelings of woundedness and vulnerability.

The quality of awareness central to the practice of mindfully held anger is indispensable here. If we, as receivers of our partner’s anger, can through such practice significantly lessen or even cease our identification with what such anger is trying to address in us, then we can, in a sense, stand beside our partner, looking with him or her at what he or she is angry about, with minimal reactivity or defensiveness.

In so doing, we are openly hearing both his or her anger and our response to it, while remaining compassionately aware of the overall situation. This allows us to realize, and not only intellectually, that our partner’s anger is not actually at us, but at what we have been or are doing. Mindfulness here does not necessarily mean or require the non-expression of anger -- at best, it coexists with both compassion and unguarded aliveness.

For anger to enhance intimacy, it ultimately needs to be met with nondefensive, empathetic listening (which doesn’t necessarily mean that the one listening should suppress his or her own anger), listening in which agreement or disagreement with what is being said or conveyed remains secondary to one’s empathy and caring for the other. Such is the essence of receiving anger. Rejecting our intimate other’s anger -- not aggression, but anger -- simply short-circuits it. This generally encourages not only the “stockpiling” of anger-energy and frustration, but also a resulting pressure to find other outlets, such as the subtle cruelties of passive aggression. Anger that is rejected, anger that is denied compassion, anger that is trashed or ostracized or declawed, is the very anger that corrodes and sabotages intimacy.

Rejected anger, anger denied its natural or needed expression, does not necessarily vanish. To take but one example, it may -- like toothpaste in a tube that’s being tightly gripped at its “waist” -- be rerouted “upward,” recruited for intellectual aggression, and it may also be (particularly in men) squeezed “downward” into the pelvic “bowl,” for drainage and/or dramatization through masturbation, erotic violence, and the more “civilized” variations of these that often pass for “normal” sex.

When men ejaculate away the energy and thrust of their anger -- emptying it into their partner -- they are simply forcing their sexuality to be the outhouse of their frustration and rage. However, when we assign sex to stress-release (thereby refusing to release sex from the obligation to make us feel better), we are only screwing ourselves, marooning ourselves from intimacy.

Sharing anger in an intimate relationship can be scary, but it does not always have to remain a serious affair. Playfulness and healthy anger are not mutually exclusive. Skillful teasing in the midst of anger may in fact create more room for hearing what it is really saying.

The joy that can sometimes arise during full-out anger is not necessarily a sign of sadism or “on top” triumph, but may simply signal the sheer pleasure of being full-bloodedly and unabashedly alive. In such a richly embodied totality of expressiveness, there may be unexpected openings to the Sacred; anger at its raging peak can sometimes mutate almost instantaneously into sublimely open beatific states. At such times, the daimonic power of anger -- daimonic meaning any natural function having the power to take over us -- literally possesses us, making of us a “clearing” into which the Sacred can stream and nakedly show itself. In the thundering heat of intense rage, ecstasy may thus emerge -- especially when there is enough intimacy and trust -- as an inviolable, luminously anchored sense of vitally alive, unfettered Being. Some signs of anger may still linger, but there will also be an effortless yet deep empathy, a great spaciousness that makes it more than possible for a deeper integrity to surface, for tears to freely stream, for humor to upstage righteousness, for love to shine. And do not these together constitute a particularly fertile soil for intimacy, both personal and transpersonal?

When anger and love are permitted to coexist, intimacy cannot help but deepen.