From:
Jonathan Van Viegen
My pied-a-terre in Panama City
Monday, June 1, 2026
Dear Friend,
If you’ve never heard me say this before, let me tell you that I, personally, struggle with anger. Always have. Ever since I was a teenager.
Why’s that important?
Because my entire marriage, I used anger to cover up a wound that carried into adulthood.
A wound that my wife would trigger.
And a wound that I unfairly blamed her for.
That wound was that I was leavable.
Only, she didn’t cause the wound, yet she found herself paying the fine for a crime she didn’t commit.
A lot of good men secretly feel leavable.
A lot of women, too.
Somewhere deep down, a lot of people carry a fear they rarely talk about:
“What if I’m not enough?”
“I’m not successful.”
“I’m not loveable.”
And so on.
The problem with our wounds that we all walk around with is that they rarely show up as vulnerability.
More often than not they show up as defensiveness.
Anger.
Withdrawal.
Control.
Shutting down.
The behavior most people show their spouse isn’t the wound.
My anger wasn’t my wound. My fear of abandonment was.
The wound is always the message underneath the behavior.
And that’s what most couples miss.
When I sit with couples in session, I’m far less interested in what they’re fighting about than the identity-level wound hiding underneath the fight.
Because your deepest wound shapes your loudest behavior.
The husband who gets defensive likely feels inadequate. And likely secretly to boot.
The wife who overthinks everything often feels unchosen.
I want you to lean into your wound. Learn to understand it.
Shine a light on it.
Stop hiding from it.
When you do that, you stop fighting each other…
Because you can start healing each other.
