Verified Document

Intimate Relationships Term Paper

Harriet Lerner's book, The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships provides a helpful and insightful look at anger in women's lives. She teaches women that anger can be a constructive emotion that can help strengthen personal relationships. Her advice can be especially helpful for women, like me, who have sometimes dealt with anger in ineffective and potentially damaging ways. Overall, Lerner's book is full of helpful advice for women seeking to understand and manage their anger. Lerner's book is was initially attractive because of the title's emphasis on anger. I have known many women in my life who seem to feel that anger is an unattractive and unhealthy emotion that should be suppressed and avoided. As a result, these women seemed to suffer from a great deal of repressed hostility in their personal and work relationships. They would rarely become outwardly angry at people, and yet they would comfortably undermine the confidence of others, and act out in a passive-aggressive manner. I often wondered if there was a better approach to managing anger than the one that these women and so many others seemed to take. The point was driven home when I started to notice myself acting in the same sort of passive-aggressive manner. Lerner's book promised to provide a chance...

Lerner notes that women are commonly seen as nurturers and peacekeepers, and that venting anger often brings about disapproval. In defiance of the common belief that anger is disruptive, Lerner argues that anger is a powerful signal for change that can be a valuable tool in helping women to empower themselves.
Lerner argues that denying and silencing anger has the end result of making women feel helpless and powerless. She suggests that in denying anger women deny an important signal for change and empowerment in their lives. Instead of denying anger, Lerner argues that women should attempt to define the true source of their anger. It is in this identification that women can hope to learn to use anger as a tool for lasting change in their personal relationships.

In general, Lerner's comments about women's perceptions of anger ring true. As noted earlier, I know a great number of women who deny and suppress…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Lerner, Harriet. 1997. The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships. Quill; Reissue edition.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Intimate Relationship on Social Psychology
Words: 822 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Intimate Relationships The human animal is indeed a social animal. Throughout our history, Homo sapiens has demonstrated its need to maintain and make new social bonds, especially in the romantic and sexual arena. This short report examines the factors that modern individuals reports as important in beginning a personal relationship. Both single and committed males and females will be surveyed, and results compared withy regard to gender, age, and divorce and

Intimate Relationship and Hiv
Words: 1564 Length: 5 Document Type: Interview

Avni (name changed for anonymity) is a forty-year-old empowered HIV+ woman currently employed in the position of community coordinator with an ART (anti-retroviral therapy) facility. She was able to transform from a bias and social stigma victim (on account of her status as an HIV+ individual) to her current self because of her resolve and the social assistance of a medico-social work organization (Kushwaha & Kumkar, 2012). Born on December 10,

Relationship and Boundary Issues in
Words: 2702 Length: 9 Document Type: Essay

The second act of the social worker that has a strong link with the given theme is when the social worker offered job/work to the client at his place for looking after his children. These two exhibited activities of the social worker are being and outside the scope of the social work ethics based on which these activities are defied as giving nonprofessional services to the client. These activities

Intimate Partner Violence IPV Involves Violent Acts
Words: 607 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

Intimate partner violence (IPV) involves violent acts including murder, rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault between individuals in intimate relationships such as current spouses, former spouses, current boy/girl friend or former boy / girl friend. The concept of IPV can be thought of in two ways or types, in both a narrow and a broad sense. The narrow usage refers to acts of physical assault on a

Intimate Relationship Conflict Resolution Communication
Words: 607 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

In the Modern Family episode entitled �Spanks for the Memories,� (Season , Episode 15), Joe and Gloria have a miscommunication that leads to interpersonal conflict. Although it ends humorously and without overt discord on the show, this type of conflict could have resulted in a complete communication breakdown and possibly lead to the demise of the relationship. In this episode, though, Joe and Gloria use relationship maintenance behaviors like being

Intimate Violence Victimology 3365 This
Words: 2010 Length: 6 Document Type: Term Paper

Also, not all domestic violence cases are egregiously violent, and some may constitute forms of intimidation that are not specifically delineated in the federal statutes. In these cases, state legislatures must step in to help victims. For example, in the state of Ohio, victims of domestic violence or victims protected by the court can "have their mail sent directly to the Secretary of State's Office," which will then forward

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now