I’m so sick of her bad temper

Dear Coleen

My girlfriend has anger issues. She flies off the handle at the smallest thing and every disagreement erupts into a huge argument.

What worries me is we have a young daughter and I don’t want her affected by the atmosphere at home. But my girlfriend doesn’t seem to care who’s around when she loses her rag. She just says, “it’s the way I am”, which isn’t good enough, as I’m getting sick of walking on eggshells around her. Have you any advice?

Coleen says

Tell her that’s an excuse, it’s not a reason,and it’s not good enough. Maybe she has always been an angry person because she’s never acknowledged her anger and got help with it. You’re right – you can’t behave like that around a child because it can have a lasting effect. She could grow up with a very skewed view of relationships and it could affect how she forms relationships in the future.

If a partner is screaming at her, she might associate that with love, and it’s not. You need to tell your girlfriend that unless she gets help, you can’t carry on like this and you don’t want your daughter to be affected.

Maybe your girlfriend is replicating what happened in her house when growing up, but that’s something that can be helped through in therapy.

If it’s just stress and she has a short fuse, she can learn techniques to control it before it gets to the point where she’s lost her temper.