Help needed to explain why angry men are scary.

[psed]

I have a new partner (less than a year) and I saw him angry for the first time recently. Which was fair enough, I had made a mistake and was apologising. He couldn’t understand how in the moment of his anger I felt fundamentally scared of being hurt (I’m a woman, and I have experienced assault before).

I explained this to him later, but he felt annoyed and upset that I thought he was capable of hurting me (in that split second moment of being confronted by an angry man). He was particularly put out because he would never physically hurt me, and never has done to anyone, which I believe.

I couldn’t quite articulate or explain why I would respond in the way of being scared because in his eyes he is “not all men” and wouldn’t hurt me. How can I help him understand/see that I know he is a safe person to be around, and it is not a reflection of him, but the automatic fear response in the presence of an angry man is justified?

I think it's because you know he could if he wanted to

Had you actually made a mistake or did he tell you you'd made a mistake?

Either way he sounds intimidating and unpleasant if he makes you have to explain why you're scared. A new partner should be caring and loving and shouldn't get angry or make you scared or pick apart and dispute the reasons why you feel scared because of something he's done.

He sounds like a gaslighter and a bully.

Because angry men kill women.
He shouldn't be making you feel bad for being scared of his anger, he should be doing everything possible to learn to control it so that you don't need to feel scared again.

Because he is physically bigger and stronger than you and could physically hurt you if he so chose.
It's not a conscious decision or something that we choose when afraid. It is an ancient and fundamental reaction in the most basic parts of our brains to react in fight, flight or freeze.
You can't control your reaction to fear but he can control his reaction to anger so he really has no place being all offended.

Adults can argue and shout without there being a fear that the person will strike out. If you go into all relationships thinking that if you make the other person angry they will hit you'll drive yourself crazy.

Eould counselling help?

You need to be able to speak your mind/make mistakes just as much as the other person is without fear of being physically hurt. it sounds like you last experience is clouding your relationship

In what way was he displaying his anger which made you scared?
Was he shouting? If so that’s unnecessary and aggressive and that’s why you were scared.

I think angry people of both sexes are scary, particularly if you have experience of being physically harmed as a result of that anger.

I don't think it's particularly hard to understand tbh. If he doesn't understand I'd be asking myself why. Is he not trying to or is he thick?

Why purpose does an outward display of anger have except for scaring someone? Shouting, posturing, waving your hands around, glaring, clenching... they are all signs in primates that a fight is going to happen. When a man does it to a woman, it's doubly scary because the chances are he's much stronger.

Bad men do it to get their way. Good men should listen to the person telling them it's scary and act accordingly.

Fine to be angry, not fine to act out that anger to someone. And you'd 'made a mistake' and were apologising. If you were apologising, and it was a mistake, why was he angry?

Also, you don't know he's not one of those men, you've known him too short a time to say that. Some violent men are a a slow burn.

It's the "men are scared that women will laugh at them, women are scared men will kill them" thing. If it's never occurred to you that your partner could, if they got the notion, kill you, without a shed load of empathy and some education, they will not understand.

But it's not your job to do the educating, unless You Choose To

I don't get why they find this so difficult to understand. Surely most men have encountered other men who are larger and/or more scary/unpredictable than them and know what it's like to feel scared of someone based on their capability to hurt them? Or can at least imagine how they would feel if a larger man was angry and shouting at them? It's almost as though they don't want to understand

Exactly this. Angry men kill women, every day. Angry women don’t kill men all the time, it’s much more rare, so let’s not have the usual “women do bad things too”.
And yes we ALL know it’s not all men. But most men are stronger and more aggressive than most women, and the fact is that overall, women are at risk from men. And we don’t know which previously safe man will turn on us.

This is concerning, his hurt feelings are more important to him than you looking after your physical safety. Agree he's being willfully ignorant

You felt scared of him. Why are you questioning that, or apologising for it? He scared you. He did something, maybe a look or gesture or words, that made you afraid of him.

He should be apologising, not you.

Listen to yourself. You're probably right.

Would you have behaved similarly in the same situation? I doubt it. Why are you questioning yourself? He frightened you and that’s enough.
I have no time for angry men quite simply because I can handle my own emotions and expect a similar level of emotional maturity from
a partner. What was so bad that he had to frighten you?
But then I spent years with an angry man. When I looked back at the things that caused his rage they were so insignificant, lost keys, a dented car, etc etc. Most had zero to do with me. I always , always told myself that his anger wasn’t directed at me and never would be. Until it was, spectacularly.

I wouldn't be so confident of your safety with him.

He's telling you you're at fault for your instinctive reaction to him being one of those men. When he is, as his behaviour proved it.

He 'won' through fear. He just doesn't want you to say it out loud. It would make him look bad, wouldn't it? Because 'I'm not one of those men, NAMALT, I'm definitely not, I'm a Good Guy'.

So he scared you with his anger, and then expected you to apologise for being scared of him? Screams red flag to me.

Because if someone put him in a shark tank and told him “not all sharks” and one of them started flashing their teeth at him, he’d be scared too

Ps google freedom programme and pay to do their online course (it’s not stupidly expensive)

I don’t think I could stay with someone who scared me with their anger. I’ve also been assaulted and witnessed DV. Men can and do hurt women and you don’t necessarily know when it is going to happen. That your partner can’t understand or won’t take on board you telling him how his behaviour made you feel is a massive red flag to me. It seems to be all about him and his ego. As for people getting angry when someone makes a mistake, I can’t stand it. We all make mistakes and no-one is perfect. If you can’t forgive a mistake in your partner I don’t think there is a lot of hope for the relationship.

He got angry for a reason, and it was to scare you.

It's a feature not a bug.

I think you need to think about what happened here very carefully.

It may be that he was completely in control, expressed reasonable anger and you were scared not because he looked or acted really threatening but because your history means you will always react this way.

If this is the case then you explain to him that angry men make you scared because some men are physically threatening when angry and women have learned to be wary of them. Including you. It doesn't mean you think he will hit you just that you have been assaulted so are really really reactive to anger. If he doesn't get that, then he isn't a good one.

Or it may be that you spotted something in his anger that gave you just cause to feel scared and threatened. i have had this reaction with one particular family member (female as it happens). When she lost it and showed her anger, I was physically scared of her even though she is smaller than me and her punching me was the most unlikely thing logically. I think it was because I spotted something completely out of control in her. She was expressing anger about a situation that she had a point about but every thing in me was shouting "watch out, she could do anything, get out of here"

Thanks for your replies. I definitely did make a massive mistake and was owning up to it, he had every right to feel angry. It was not directed at me, he was expressing his anger by gesturing and the tone of his voice, he wasn’t shouting. I equally have felt angry and acted in the same way as him.

I also know my previous experiences make it difficult for me to understand whether I am safe or not (and yes, I am having therapy to address my issues).

I guess my question is not about abuse in relationships per say, but how can I explain to a man that he has the potential to present as intimidating even if he doesn’t mean to, when he (and I) know he is a safe person. Just like I feel scared of a group of teenagers on the street, and him defending them saying they’re just kids hanging out and having fun, whereas I feel unsafe.

How can I explain why and help him understand that I, and probably a lot of other women and girls, feel like I do?

A man may be bigger, stronger and faster than you and physically has the capacity to harm you and you would be unable to stop it.
Which he knows is true for you.
So in that way his body is a weapon, that he is in control of and you are not.
When someone is angry they seem unpredictable, irrational and not in control of themselves.
If you were with an angry person who had a gun, you would be scared, even if they loved you and even if they would never hurt you- thats still an out of control, irrational and unpredictable person with a gun.
And you are alone with them, and you did something to piss them off.

If youve never seen them angry before- you don't know how they escalate, he might be a man who walks off and calms down, he might be a man who puts your head through a window- you don't know yet and however wonderful he is usually- angry is different and you can't always guess what will happen.

So even if you know that he won't hurt you, you know he's not like that, of course he isn't- it's really not even about him. Your reaction isn't even about him, its just a response to a potential threat.
Angry is scary because angry could kill you, its not about him.

In the same way that he might have been scared if/when his parents were ‘angry’ as a child, or if a bigger, stronger male was ‘angry’ with him now, presumably.

I think a lot of this depends on yours and his definitions of the word angry tbh. And if his justification for being angry was valid.

I think you can be angry without being frightening it's about how you control and display the anger if he's displaying it in a scary way it's worrying. Why can't he control the aggression there's never an excuse for that male or female