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[quote=Anonymous]I have been with my wife for 18 years, married for almost 15 and I used to be like you, OP.  My wife is the more even-keeled partner and has a good tempering on me.  Fortunately, although much calmer, she wasn't afraid to speak up, even when I was upset/mad and say things like "That doesn't help."  "You're taking your anger/frustration out on me and I don't appreciate it."

What you need to do is focus on how and when you vent and react.  At the time, I turned to venting in the car on my commute.  I often yelled at and harangued the radio anchors on WTOP or DJs on music stations and fortunately, they didn't get hurt by anything I said.  :-)  Bad then, going to the pool was also a good place to work off excess frustration energy.

I also picked up a few gibberish phrases that I trained myself to say when it was inappropriate to say other things.  My office mate many years ago used to say "Argle bargle" and I adapted to using that.  Another friend says "Cheese and crackers." etc.  I still say "Argle bargle" occasionally, especially when my young kids are around.

Another tip is that when I was angry, frustrated, upset, I would mentally think a bunch without saying it.  I would often "take 5" and go to another room or someplace to sit and digest what I was thinking about, calm down.  I would often wait until hours later or the next day to come and verbalize frustrations when I was in a calmer and more constructive mood.  Often, by then, I had come up with some alternative proposals for the situation/problem that we could brainstorm around.  For example, in your case, I would get frustrated by the tight budget and go and think on it and later come back with an idea like "I've been really frustrated with our budget and so I'm thinking of taking an evening job a couple of nights a week to earn some extra cash and ease the financial tension.  Can we make that work?"  THen we can brainstorm around the idea and come up with some plans.

Frustration, venting and the lack of a mental sieve between brain and mouth are learned behavior.  You can teach yourself to swallow emotional outbursts or substitute other sayings and then find ways to adapt to the frustration/anger off-line or at least when others aren't within hearing range.  Try to keep the bigger picture in mind.  You aren't going to change yourself in a matter of days or weeks.  This will take months and years to retrain yourself.  The conscious thought are easier to change.  The emotional outbursts take longer to adjust, but you can do it.[/quote]

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