Our culture shares a common belief that fighting within a marriage is normal. It’s even labeled as “healthy.” Psychologists and relationship experts insist that if a couple doesn’t fight and argue once in a while, something is actually wrong in the marriage.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)
However, the Bible has something else to say. Whether yelling or silently brooding, God doesn’t give us a pass to be angry at one another. What the world calls “good” God sees as sin, and being angry at our spouse won’t bring Him glory.
But what does Ephesians 4:31 look like in a marriage? Why do we fight? And above all, how can we stop?
How anger poisons a marriage
This passage in Ephesians seems to have a whole range of ways we can be angry at one another. However, we can narrow it down to three major categories. Let’s look at ways we let anger chip away at the joy of marriage, leading us deeper into sin.
Bitterness and Slander
Many people who pride themselves on having a peaceful marriage may not realize they’re guilty of this. We often think of anger as an emotional outburst, with yelling and thrown lamps. However, anger like that comes from the same heart as bitterness.
There are a number of ways we let bitterness be part of our marriages. We may suffer silently, trying to quietly get along so that we don’t make waves. Perhaps we slander our spouse in our minds, complaining about their thoughtless actions and selfish behavior as we play the victim. Our bitterness can also be years of resentment that have grown into a certain coldness for the person we once felt such love for.
The important thing to remember about bitterness is that it’s not a better form of anger. It still causes great strife in a marriage, and in its silence, we can actually villainize our spouse even more because they don’t get an opportunity to explain any misconceptions or correct their behavior. They’re left completely unaware of how much they’re hurting us, and we’re left isolating ourselves more and more each day.
In a way, we find satisfaction in this pain. We embrace it, letting it comfort us. Perhaps it gives us a feeling of control in the situation, or we tell ourselves that we’re doing the right thing by not making a big deal about something. Whatever our motivation, we think that quietly harboring our anger is what we ultimately need to do.
Anger, Wrath, and Clamor
When we think of anger in a marriage, this is often what we picture. This can be an angry tone in how we speak and act, loud and hurtful words designed to hurt our spouse, or stomping around and slamming doors. It can even take the form of physical or emotional abuse. Anger like this takes many forms, but we all know when we’re guilty of them.
It’s important to realize that these words and actions are our own choice. We so often want to blame our spouse for provoking us or our emotions for taking control. In that way, we are little different than a child who wants to blame anything but themselves so they don’t have to accept the consequences of their choices. If we insist on blaming others, we cannot possibly see our need to turn to Christ to change our hearts.
Another important thing to realize is the purpose of obvious anger. If it’s a choice we make, then we must understand why. It seems that there are two primary motivators for us reacting this way.
Primarily, it’s because it makes us feel good. Our anger is a sign that we are the most important person in that moment, and our words and actions are choices designed to make us feel better. We want people to know we’re angry so that we’re seen. We want to yell to make sure we’re not only heard, but that the other person can feel bad for how they’ve made us feel. We’re convinced that by showing our anger, we’ll find the satisfaction that self-control can’t offer us.
On top of that, our anger is often our desire to feel better by hurting someone else. Why do we speak those hurtful words? Because the more they hurt, the better we feel. Why do we throw things and stomp around? Because when they fear our anger, we feel more in control. We want them to hurt more so we can hurt less.
Malice
Malice is the idea of doing things with ill intent. This is often where we turn when quiet bitterness no longer satisfies us, but we don’t want to make a big show of hurting our spouse to make ourselves feel better. If wrath is a big bomb of anger, malice is a thousand tiny cuts.
We show malice in our words through the biting comments we make. We may criticize, mock, or talk down to the other person. We may even give them the silent treatment to really let them know what we think of them.
Our actions show this when we find satisfaction in doing something to inconvenience or hurt our spouse. We may purposely neglect to get something at the store, put their keys away, or anything else that will have a negative impact on them. With these malicious acts, we often tell ourselves that we want to teach them a lesson or make them pay.
Malice is petty and fueled by vengeance. Like hurtful words, these little things we do are meant to find our satisfaction in making sure we are responsible for the other person being slightly less happy than they could be.
The fight against fighting
All of us can find ourselves in one of these three categories. Whether we’re quietly angry, subtle about our discontent, or outright explosive with our emotions, we all give in to sin in some way. We all, in the end, find some way to justify our actions.
As we move in to Part 2, let’s end with two important points. First, we choose our angry responses because we’re convinced it will satisfy us. Even suffering in silence, though we may hate it, still brings some measure of comfort or control that we otherwise are afraid not to have. It is our pride and selfishness that makes us want to use pain, whether our pain our theirs, to make ourselves feel better.
Second, we aren’t helpless victims with no hope of stopping our destructive behaviors. True, we are incapable of fixing ourselves, but we aren’t alone in this. We have a great and mighty Savior whose power is greater than our desire to sin. Understanding that our anger is rooted in our pride and selfishness means that we don’t need Christ to change our actions, but the very heart that leads to those actions.
If Part 1 left us feeling discouraged and disgusted with ourselves, Part 2 will show how much hope we have through Jesus Christ. Whatever role anger has played in our marriages up to this point, through Christ we can go beyond learning coping mechanisms. By surrendering our sin to Christ, we can rest in a marriage that brings Him glory, and through that we can experience the joy and peace of a marriage that pleases God.
