With obvious exceptions, it appears to me that women carry their “mad” with husband, father, boyfriend far longer than men do.
If I have a disagreement or a shouting match with my wife, I make my point and about 5 minutes later, I am willing to leave the dispute alone and move on…But a female, generally speaking may take hours, days or even weeks of brooding, staying pissed off before they let it go and return to normal. If you are in agreement, why do you think this occurs? (other than the Venus/Mars excuse). If you are NOT in agreement I would like to hear from you also.
Part 2: Why is it so difficult for women to say: I’m sorry (if they are wrong?)
IMHO, you have limited experience with effective dispute resolutions. If your wife is still angry after shouting, then her dispute is unresolved.
As a woman, I find it easy to apologize when I’m wrong. I am usually sorry if I hurt someone and want them to know it.
Being “wrong” or “right” is not always why women carry their anger longer (to the extent they do). Women get pissed at the tone of the conversation and context of the interaction and the sense of being “wronged” often has nothing to do with the logical power, or lack thereof, of the competing arguments at issue, but how the women feels she was treated in the interaction. Women are generally more acutely sensitive to emotional states and the fact that you made them feel bad (even temporarily) is enough to give them a bad taste towards interacting with you
I’ll have to agree with Cyn…if she’s still holding onto it, the problem wasn’t resolved for her. It may have been for you, but you need to work it out so that you both feel resolved after a fight, not just so that you feel it’s resolved.
I have no problem saying I’m sorry, but I have been known in the past to say something like “I’m not going to apologize for how this makes me feel, can we talk about this?” - if she refuses to apologize, then communication could work out the problems until she is more satisfied.
That said, some people (both men and women) are just able to hold onto a grudge a hell of a long time. With my parents, it was my dad who had that role, and he’s able to hold onto things for years and then bring them up when my mother thought it was a non-issue by that point. And I thought it was men who had trouble saying they’re sorry (not in my experience, but just in watching tv and stuff).
It is my uninformed uneducated belief/observation that men will get very angry but calm down very quickly whereas women will get less angry but stay angry for longer.
Just the other day I got very angry with my consistently sticking mouse. I gave it a good old satisfying SLAM on the surface which seemed to frighten it into working fine. That release left me quite satisfied!
People should lose their temper more often! (but do something ‘safe’ when they do. and especially not harm another living thing in the process) In the past, when I have lost my temper I’ve hit a solid wall or given my keyboard a right good flat-handed punch (several times) the satisfaction more than makes up for the possible damage to keyboard.
I’m the exact opposite, I get very angry very quickly and I’m completely over it in a minute. Maybe it’s the red hair ;). My DH is the opposite, and he’s said sorry to me exactly twice in the five years we’ve been married.
I once dated a girl who, at age 21, was still angry at a girl in one of her college classes for something that happened when she was FOUR YEARS OLD!!!
Men still hold grudges, but when it comes to arguments and the like, I agree that women tend to hold onto their anger longer. Lord knows I’ve pissed off a lot of women in the past, and whereas I got over the situation quickly, some of them are still pissed at me.
What I don’t understand is that women are usually the ones accredited with wanting to talk things through, but in my experience, getting a girl to sit down and discuss things is like pulling teeth out of a crocodile. If something’s the matter, I like to discuss it till it’s through, not just say a few things then leave even more irrate.
I’m with Cyn. If I’m wrong, I apologize, and move on.
Anger is a transient thing for me. It takes a long time for me to get “fighting mad” (in fact, I only remember this happening once). It seems to me that anger is too disturbing to hold onto - so I don’t.
It’s been my experience (and my previous year’s psych class bears this out) that women are usually better at determining the feelings of others purely from body language. Men, on the other hand, aren’t as skilled at this. They seem to prefer dealing with concrete events and actions, rather than thoughts and intentions.
But my experiences are by no means a generalization for all of womankind or mankind.
Well, personally (and I’m a guy) I don’t get angry too often, and when I do, unless I’m REALLY mad, I don’t stay angry very long. This can be annoying; I often want to stay angry at the person, but just can’t do it. I only tend to hold grudges or stay pissed at someone if they really hurt me, not just did something to make me angry.
My experience with girls/women is… it really depends. Same with guys. I must say that people remaining angry with me long after the issue is past is one thing that annoys me. Dammit, I’m not mad anymore, why are you!? And yes, sometimes that is because the problem was not resolved to their satisfaction. Sometimes it’s just because they take awhile to get over it.
Well, my aunt can hold grudges for years over the most trivial things. She only just recently started talking to her own brother again, giving over a 12 year old grudge. Y’see, he left her son’s wedding reception a bit early because he had a political meeting to go to. The rat.
Other than that, I can’t say as I’ve noticed any sexual correlation to temper, though.
Having read all your posts and surprised that only a few of you agree that women, in general, stay angrier longer, I submit the following for your opinion…If I have a disagreement with a male friend or vice versa, we state the issue, discuss it in a logical manner and almost always one of us states: I understand where you are coming from; that was stupid of me…I’m sorry and as I said…a couple minutes later, everything has returned to normal.
I find that women in general detour from common sense and logic (and I’m not speaking just of MY wife or Daughter) as they seem to bypass listening to reason and completely ride on the back of emotion.
When I get angry its usually because of my boyfriend is either yelling ** or ** name calling. I will admit when I’m wrong in an argument. I will admit defeat too. I hold onto anger when someone is stabbing at my feelings.
Excuse my impertinence LunaSea but… you’re counting?. Doesn’t that lend the OP with a (imho) misguided sense of correctness?
In my experience, such as it is, every man, woman, jack of us holds irrational slights, grudges whatever to our bosom far longer than healthy in some way or fashion. If you think this is untrue in your (generic) case, you haven’t had enough therapy yet
Could that be because the people you are choosing as friends have temperments like yours?
As for me, I also haven’t noticed any difference between genders… I agree with Cyn and Sivalensis, if the problem/situation is resolved, most people tend to stop being angry, when it is not resolved they stay mad indefinitely.
