Finding love after 50. The website for middle aged singles and senior singles, providing information and dating advice for middle age dating and senior dating. This column's topic: Living with an angry person is like tap dancing on Jello. Anger and love don't mix, at least not for long. Something's got to give.

Tap Dancing on Jello--Dating an Angry Person

Elton John recorded an album with the Melbourne (Australia) Symphony Orchestra. One of the songs is called "Tonight," not the "Tonight" from West Side Story, but a little-known song with a powerful message, particularly if you're in a relationship with an angry person.

It's a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, featuring Elton's electric piano, backed by the full orchestra. Very simply, the song begins with a question: "Tonight, do we have to fight again?"

The song continues by hinting that the couple fights often and the singer would just like to drift off to sleep without another incident. The song ends with Elton singing he'd prefer to see a smile from her instead.

I often listened to that song when I was in a relationship with an angry person. It was a song of hope that things would change and the anger would subside. But it never did. I finally had the guts to get out.

Reader Barbara, referring to a male friend of hers, said, "He's vitriolic when speaking of his ex's, and blasphemes them." When she recommended he let go of his anger, he said, "But I like my anger."

Barbara added that men and women with sharp tongues live in denial--they blame and inflict their wrath on others, denying the problem is theirs.

People who live with an angry person should realize that the person's anger may have nothing to do with them. Often it's a defense mechanism-a person thinks by getting angry, the anger will give that person power over a situation where he or she feels inadequate.

Reader Bonnie (city withheld by request) says she finally came to the realization of what an angry person her husband of 30 years had been. She feels she was his verbal whipping-post for all that was wrong in his life. Bonnie said he left her because life wasn't giving him what he wanted.

After the separation, he blamed her when their adult children told him how negative they felt about him, and he accused her of trying to turn the kids against him. Then, he became angry with her because he got a DUI (She must have stood over him and just poured that booze down his throat).

"I feel ever so free! I am enjoying going home at night knowing I don't have to tap dance on Jello to avoid another angry scene. Something good came out of bad," says Bonnie.

Living with an angry person is stressful. I thought of it as walking on egg shells. When we're stressed, we don't get enough sleep, and it's hard on our health in other ways.

And then there's always the worry that the anger could escalate into violence. Being around an angry person is just no way to live. I had to call 911 in my own home because I thought the woman I was living with was going to harm me.

Either the angry person must admit that they need help and get it, or the person on the receiving end must a find a way out, which is often difficult.

Life is too short to tolerate anger.