BF has a bit of an anger management issue

[RdHrshyKss]

my bf and i will have been together for about a year. he's wonderful. he's loving, passionate, affectionate, and we just can't get enough of each other. we have been inseparable for the past year, tell each other how much we love each other every day, and the sex is the best i've ever had.

problem? well, he has a bit of an anger issue. not towards me! i have never felt unsafe around him, and i know he would never hurt me...he has never even cursed at me or called me a name. he treats me like a princess. but he has these pretty intense outbursts when he's angry and it's towards stupid shit...or at least things that i think are trivial and not worth the aggravation. i care about him a lot and i know this isn't healthy. i was wondering if there were any guys on here who might be able to relate and give me any advice on things i could do in those situations to help him calm down.

for example, we went golfing this weekend and let's just say he wasn't playing too well. couldn't really hit anything the way he wanted and it just got worse and worse and worse over the course of the day. cursing up a storm, bashing his clubs against the ground, a bit embarrassing honestly. when he'd get back in the cart, i'd rub his back and tell him it's no big deal, that he's just having an off day...it doesn't reflect his ability at all, that i know he's a great golfer. it seemed to help him calm down a bit during our transition to the next hole, but then he'd start at the next hole begging his club to give him a nice drive, it wouldn't go where he wanted and it would start the cycle all over again. i can see it from start to finish, but trying to talk to him about it just aggravates him more. i don't want him to feel like i'm pointing out his flaws, i want him to feel that i support him.

i've read a couple other threads and noticed people saying that anger comes second to another emotion. most of his outbursts stem from frustration. any suggestions or first-hand experience on how to manage those kinds of things. anything i can do in those instances as his partner that might help him relax? i love him so much and it kills me when he gets like that.

thanks for the responses in advance!

[Wakeup]

anything i can do in those instances as his partner that might help him relax?

Have you tried NOT rewarding him for his piss poor behaviour? You rub his back when he's being a baby and coo coo him out of his tantrum. That's a pretty good reason to keep being an angry little boy. You're not allowing him to grow as a person by making his outbursts soothing for him afterwards.

I'd be telling him to knock it off or the game ends here.

[iamaninnocentma]

yeah, i can relate to this. the last time i lost at tiger woods golf by 3 putting the 17th at sawgrass i threw the gamepad through a window,lol.

how can you keep a straight face when he is begging his driver for a good one, lol. brilliant

[Wakeup]

oh .. lolzzzz

[RdHrshyKss]

i don't want to give the impression that he is some kind of spoiled little brat, because he isn't. he is a very giving person, never expects anything from anyone, is always willing to lend a helping hand, respects his parents and takes care of himself. his problem is that he bottles a lot of things up inside and it shows its ugly face in those kind of trivial situations. whether it be a shitty round of golf or some part he's fixing on his motorcycle not cooperating.

i know exactly what you are saying wakeup...and i agree with it to a certain extent. i don't want my supportive nature to enable this kind of behavior from him, but it just turns into a big fight if i start throwing ultimatums at him like that. if i come at him upset when he is already upset it just escalates it further. now he is not only angry at the way he's playing, but he is feeling attacked by me as well. i was just wondering if there are things i can suggest he do to help calm himself down, because i know in the end he is the one who needs to gain control of himself in those situations. possibly things that other guys learned in anger management classes or just figured out on their own who had similar issues. things i could recommend to him when he first starts getting upset. but i will try going the middle ground with your advice. maybe i won't be so consoling and will just take the stance of not getting involved. i'll recommend some things he could try to do to calm himself and leave it up to him to do something about it.

and don't get me wrong, if he has an outburst and ends up getting snappy with me, i let him know that he needs to cut it out asap because i'm not going to tolerate him taking it out on me. but in situations where i know it is just him letting his frustrations get the best of him and reacting that way, i don't want to get in the middle of it or make it about me.

i don't know, i'm pretty torn about the whole thing. i don't want to enable him, but i also don't want to become the nagging bitch either. i care about him and i know that he doesn't enjoy getting like that. when i've asked him about it, he says the frustration/anger just grabs a hold of him and he doesn't know how to contain it. if anyone has been in a similar situation and has any recommendations that i can give him, or anything that i could do as his gf to help him along, i'd be appreciative. thanks!

[IndiReloaded]

Find out about his frustration before golf and have sex? Seems better than him making a public ass of himself.

[RdHrshyKss]

haha, good suggestion! maybe i can be sexy with him beforehand and flirtingly say that if he doesn't have a temper tantrum he'll be rewarded afterwards. that just might help him a bit, thanks!

but this past weekend things were great before we started playing golf. his frustration grew because of how bad he was doing. i would say the obvious public displays of aggravation didn't start until we were almost halfway done. but the sex thing would probably help a lot....will try ;-)

[VincenzoG91]

I took an anger management class several years ago, after a couple of temper tantrums that scared my girlfriend. I went into it resentfully, thinking that it would be a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense. They won me over in the first class by saying that anger is a perfectly natural reaction to certain situations, but it's no excuse for bad behavior. People have a responsibility to control their response to bad situations, and that includes anger management. The class was a very positive experience, and it saved both my relationship and my job.

Some key lessons from the class:

*The importance of assertive communication. Assertive, but not aggressive.
*Awareness of the situations that make me angry, and developing my own personal strategies for avoiding or coping with those situations.
*Because I can be a very confrontational person when angry, I need to ask for and take a time-out before my anger escalates.
*Other people may retreat when angry, and become sullen and uncommunicative. They need to improve at expressing their feelings in a respectful manner.
*Anger is often a mask covering another emotion, usually fear. Try to deal with the underlying issues driving that other emotion before retreating into anger.

[VincenzoG91]

Obviously, your guy needs to recognize that he shouldn't play golf anymore. It doesn't matter if he is good or not, he clearly isn't enjoying it. And then he should dig deeper and question why his golf performance even matters so much that he would humiliate himself in public over it. Is it a control issue? Self-esteem problem? Did his mother die of a freak golf accident? There is some serious underlying issue, and he needs to address it, because it will follow him through life even if he avoids golf courses from now on.

[RdHrshyKss]

thanks vincenzo! amazing post with very useful information. i'm assuming his behavior on the golf course was due to fear and embarrassment of playing shitty the whole time. we did have a couple people behind us that were doing pretty well and were up our ass the whole time, so i wouldn't be surprised if them watching us play made him even more frustrated/embarrassed.

my BF also retreats when he is upset with me. if i do/say something that bothers him, it usually takes a lot of pestering to get him to open up and let me know what's bothering him. i know he's upset, it's completely apparent to me with his body language (definitely sullen and uncommunicative) but he'll just say "nothing" when i ask him what's wrong. with persistence i finally get answers, but i don't want to become a nagger. i want him to feel comfortable opening up to me and maybe my approach isn't compatible with his nature...will have to reevaluate my own way of interacting with him. something else i can consider.

but seriously, thanks so much for your insight!

[RdHrshyKss]

Obviously, your guy needs to recognize that he shouldn't play golf anymore. It doesn't matter if he is good or not, he clearly isn't enjoying it. And then he should dig deeper and question why his golf performance even matters so much that he would humiliate himself in public over it. Is it a control issue? Self-esteem problem? Did his mother die of a freak golf accident? There is some serious underlying issue, and he needs to address it, because it will follow him through life even if he avoids golf courses from now on.

he enjoys it when he plays well. we play golf pretty regularly and i would say this past weekend was probably the worst he has behaved since i've met him. he really was playing horribly this weekend...i've never seen him play that bad. he wasn't hitting the balls right, and lost a shit ton of balls in places you'd think it impossible to lose them, it was like he hit a massive streak of bad luck. i jokingly told him it was all happening because of karma. i told him that if he keeps playing with a negative mindset, more negative things were gonna happen...the old self-fulfilling prophecy kinda thing. he didn't get pissed off at me for saying that surprisingly, and i'm pretty certain he even attempted to go at the next hole with a better mindset, but he'd hit the ball shitty and it was back to square one again.

his family has a tradition of playing golf on father's day, so we will see how things go this upcoming weekend. i'll try to prep him that morning as indi suggested ;-) and conjure up a plan of what he can try to do when he starts to feel the frustration boil up. but like you said, it's up to him to figure out how to control it because i'm not in his head and i don't know what's going on in those instances before he snaps. all i can do is try to help him figure it out and support him.

and as you suggest, i have a feeling it's a combination of having control issues as well as self-esteem issues. he's a small little italian guy. maybe you can call it a napoleon complex? i'm sure he was always poked fun at for being small and he has felt he needs to make up for it by coming off as a tough guy. it's not like he walks around acting like a big tough guy lol, just maybe in those instances where he's embarrassed he goes into the physical outburst kind of temper tantrum to play off to others that he's a tough guy. this is all speculation. but the self-esteem thing is definitely an issue. we have other issues in our relationship that relate to his insecurities...one big one - my exes. but that's another issue for another day.

thanks again for your help vincenzo!