Anger is Unmetabolized Grief

Just watched the Francis Weller video on grief.  He says that anger is unmetabolized grief.  I thought about the other day, when I realized that I was angry with my ex-husband for the coldness with which he treated me after the divorce.  I had told him to go see the woman he met, to find out how important that relationship was to him.  He said “I’m afraid it will ruin the whole thing.”  I said “If it does then it’s not worth having.”  When he decided he wanted to divorce me and marry her, I did not fight it, I supported him.  I gave him a very generous marriage settlement.  I thought we were best friends and wanted him to be happy.  Instead, he cut me off completely and very coldly.  Somehow that destroyed our whole marriage.  I had thought he loved me, but his coldness just made it unreal.  I remember at one point thinking he was immature and being able to forgive him.  But that didn’t last.  Then I read in Elizabeth Goudge “We hate those we have injured because they make us feel despicable” and that made a lot of sense to me.  But I still wasn’t able to forgive him.  It’s a place I periodically revisit without success in having it be different.  Just yesterday, I realized for the first time that I was angry at him.  Then this revelation from Francis Weller.  I realize that after Dana’s rejection I got badly depressed.  But I know that depression is also grief that has not found expression.  I was unable to express my grief that the marriage was over because our marriage had ceased to be something that was good.  Instead of being something good that I had had and lost, it had been an illusion.  I am angry because it was not the ending of something good, but the complete destruction of something that was never real.