What Good Would It Do? – Anger Week #2

Remembering things about anger in my life:


I remember my parents always arguing. My father especially was angry often.  I never could figure out what good it did.

I remember being very attracted to this one young woman after college.  We didn’t argue or fight in our relationship. I liked that so I married her.

I remember having a conversation with her about me being angry about something.  She said she didn’t understand why I was angry, ranting and raving about whatever it was.  Her question to me was ‘What good does it do?’  


I remember my answer.  It doesn’t have to DO any good. The good is in how good it feels to just get it out, to just express myself.  That by doing that, I let go of the anger and it goes away.  She said, ‘Then why does it come back? It doesn’t actually seem to do what you say it does.  You don’t get rid of it.’


I remember so many years of my first marriage, thinking we were doing well and she was happy because we didn’t argue or get angry very often at each other, if at all.

I remember realizing that wasn’t true. She wasn’t happy, she was just unwilling to argue and get angry about the situation, bottling it up instead until it was too late.

I remember when we got divorced. I was explaining the situation to a friend. I was going over our thought processes and how we communicated various things.  She got mad at me because we weren’t getting mad at each other. She said we should be angry; yelling and arguing about all these things we were discussing calmly.  I told her I didn’t do that because I couldn’t figure out what good it would do.

Do you think Anger does any good?  Explain.