DREIESKIVA​|Roald Kvam

“If anger isn’t allowed, love can’t thrive.”

It’s a bold claim. I know.

Most of us grow up learning that love ends when certain emotions are present—especially anger. But I think the opposite: Honestly, you might as well stop complaining about your close relationships if you’re not willing to express your—yes, that’s right—anger.

Why?

Because expressing feelings like anger—fear, disappointment, sadness—is an act of vulnerability. And vulnerability is threatening, because it exposes us to the risk of rejection. And rejection is a root cause of trauma:

It means being ignored when you need closeness.
It means being silenced when you need to be heard.
It means being threatened when you need to feel safe.

The fear of rejection leads us to suppress our emotions. In fact, in order to avoid the threat of rejection, we might disguise ourselves in «niceness» just to keep the connection.

Here’s the thing:

If we suppress our feelings to stay in a relationship, the nervous system perceives that as danger, and we enter a state of stress.

Being “nice” is poison to real relationships.
And real—or authentic—relationships are safe relationships.

Chew on this one for a while:

Relationships deepen in proportion to the amount of truth they can tolerate.

So maybe we should flip the coin. Maybe expressing anger—in a truthful and healthy way—is exactly what improves our relationships?

Healthy, honest anger is the energy that brings necessary change to relationships.

The deeper the healthy and honest anger a relationship can hold, the deeper the love it’s capable of containing.

This is how I see it:
What if every time you’re triggered into real, healthy anger, it becomes an invitation to expand your understanding of what love can be?

Now try this sentence on for size—see if it holds true when healthy, honest anger is allowed:

Love lives in the acceptance of each other’s emotions; all kinds of emotions, on all kinds of days.

And yes, the obvious must be said too:

This is NOT a call to tolerate hostility or degrading behavior!
If anger becomes hostility or violence, the one thing you must allow—immediately—is your own impulse to leave that relationship. Believe me: tolerating abuse is not “persevering in love.”

What I am talking about are our everyday triggers, and the fear of facing conflict—yes, bumping heads—and the mask of “niceness” that serves no purpose other than to maintain a relationship that, over time, becomes shallow and seriously off-course.

So here’s a question for you:

Which emotions do you find hardest to allow in your relationships?