Controlling Your Emotions

Anger and frustration are things that are very hard on a relationship. They aren’t just hard on the relationship with your spouse, but your whole family and those you some in contact with. Elder L. G. Robbins once compared stirring up anger to a recipe. He said that, “The verb stir sounds like a recipe for disaster: Put tempers on medium heat, stir in a few choice words, and bring to a boil; continue stirring until thick; cool off; let feelings chill for several days; serve cold; lots of leftovers.” I never really thought of it like this but is so true! Anger is just an emotion that can cause a disaster if we let it get out of control. One of the things that Elder L. G. Robbins also pointed out was that when people say that they “lost their temper” this isn’t very true. People can have control over their emotions. Those emotions are a part of being human, but what is important is how we let those emotions out. You can either focus it into doing something that is going to hurt your family and/or your spouse, or you can channel it to something more constructive.

            Something that my dad always made sure that me and my siblings knew growing up was that we have control over our emotions. He always made sure that we realized that we can choose how we feel and how we express those feelings. Having this knowledge has greatly helped my relationship with my fiancé. There have been times that he has done something that I didn’t completely like, but ultimately I was able to choose how I felt about it and how I showed it. We are both imperfect human beings, but as we have continued to learn how to express those emotions to one another, we have grown closer together and have developed an even stronger bond than we started out with.