Marriage – The Impact of Resentment on Relationships
August 18th, 2009 |
By Barbi Pecenco Kolski, MA
As a marriage counselor, I often hear people say they are no longer in love with their partner. They really believe that they have fallen out of love. However, quite often, what has happened is that they weren’t attending to both big and small issues in their relationship, and then they were unable to resolve the issues. This is where resentment begins to pile up. And resentment is completely TOXIC to our relationships.
We need to be able to bring up the relationship issues that are getting in the way of feeling not only loved and cared about, but also concerns that may be stopping us from living with personal integrity. It’s up to us to be able to address issues, NOT ignore them and hope they will magically go away. And we need a partner who is willing to hear us out and work through the issues with us. If you are in a relationship with someone who will not hear you and will not make agreements with you about what needs to be changed, forgiven, or negotiated, then you may need to rethink being in that relationship. It won’t be emotionally safe for you to bring up important concerns, and you will likely be piling up resentments, which will poison your relationship in the long run anyway.
Many of us don’t like to bring issues up because we don’t want conflict. However, while we may benefit in the short term from a lack of conflict, we are inadvertently doing our relationship a huge disservice, because not only will our partner feel like a stranger because we are not openly sharing our thoughts and feelings, we will also accumulate resentment because we will feel taken advantage of and not cared about.
So the bottom line is to really get the fact that if you neglect to bring up your relationship concerns to your partner and pretend that you have a conflict-free relationship, the issues won’t go away! Instead they go underground and begin to pollute the very foundation that your relationship is built on. Soon, a gap of resentment will come between you and your partner. At that point, an issue that may have been easily resolved had it been brought up, talked about, agreed on, and dealt with, is now something that is poisoning your relationship and the feelings of love and care you have for your partner. Your relationship with yourself and your personal integrity will also suffer, because you don’t trust yourself to address things that are important to you. You may not even feel entitled to bring issues up, and that is something that you are going to need to be able to do if you want your relationships to really work.
Yes, bringing issues up can be scary. Letting your partner in on what you are struggling with can provoke anxiety, especially when it’s their behavior that is concerning you. But if we are to have healthy, mature relationships, we need to bring up concerns when they are mild issues that can be worked through, instead of waiting until you wake up one day and realize you don’t even like your partner very much anymore! It’s NOT about falling out of love, it’s about letting resentment grow and take over.
If you feel that you can’t bring up issues on your own, or you try and your partner isn’t hearing you, seek out a good marriage and family therapist who can provide marriage counseling to help you 1) bring up your relationship concerns in a productive way 2) work through them with your partner and 3) negotiate solutions that work for you both.
Again, if your partner won’t participate in this important work, the therapist may also help you realize that living according to your personal integrity is crucial and that it may be time to leave the relationship.
The next time you think, “I’m not in love with my partner anymore” ask yourself if you have let any resentment poison your relationship. If you aren’t carrying any resentment toward your partner, then perhaps you truly have fallen out of love and you can move on. But those are two very different things.
©Copyright 2009 by Barbi Pecenco Kolski, MA. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Barbi and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
9 comments so far
your article was hard for me to read..it hurt….I could see clearly how i’ve let my resentment build and overflow. trying to communicate my needs just hasn;t worked.. i guess i need some help. going to a therapist just seems so serious..like I;d have to acknowlege how bad things are…it just so much easier to avoid it.
Marriage is f—ing hard work!
Right now I have a lot of built up resentment toward my husband and like this article says it has completely poisoned my relationship with him. There was a time in our lives when I could never have imagined living without him but now I have no way of even knowing how to live in the same house with him anymore. He lost his job and has become a totally different person than I once knew. I have tried to be supportive but when the bill collectors are calling on a daily basis and he acts like it does not even bother him at all, yeah, there is a lot of resentment that creeps in. Now I do not even know how to start settling these issues because there have been so many hurtful things that he has done that even when he does find work again it is not going to make all of the other go away.
Jeff I hear ya loud and clear! There is no harder job than being a good spouse! That does not mean in terms of keeping the house clean and other things like this, but being able to invest the time that marriages need to thrive and to continue to build on that over the years. Without that work and foundation resentment is bound to come into play and then you have nothing to fall back on.
There is no doubt about it. The longer we let emotions and unresolved issues simmer beneath the surface the more of a hit that our marriages are going to take. I know that when I am mad I keep things inside and then sometimes it feels like the longer I stew about something the bigger and worse the stuation becomes.
How does one work things out when all you hear is you will never change? Trying to make things work out is more difficult than leaving things the way it is. People never want to accept that the other person is trying to change. Change doesnt happen in an instant or everytime. It is a slow, gradual, conscious process. Sometimes old habits die hard but reminding oneself of wanting to change helps with that. Still convincing people is an awful job. Especially if that person happens to be your spouse.
Adler said one time that there is no behavior without a purpose conscience or unconscience and I said that we always receive in life what we want/need even we don’t know that this is what we want or need. People leave things unfinished because can be a purpose there. Imagine 1 young couple starting a marriage. They both have under the bad (on there side) each, a big eampty box. And when they don’t want to argue or don’t feel safe and decided do not start to discuss, they put the complain under the bad in the box ( each in his box). when one partner will want to leave the house, he/she will show the box full of complaines and frustrations – this will be his explanation- thinking that he is entitle to leave the house because he/she is no longer in love. But she/he in fact was the one who start to sabotage his marriage keeping his frustrations ,,under the bad in the big box”. Probably the unconscious purpose is to always have an ,,open dor” or a ,,window” to leave the relationship telling/thinking your self that is not your fault but your partner fault. ,,-what can i do, i am no longer in love”. ramona covrig, psychotherapist
What an excellent article. I recognize my own relationship here. Having worried for months I finally brought up an issue that was met only with defensiveness so I was never able to put it aside. Now I sometimes wonder if I’m still in love with my partner but really I think it’s just that I haven’t been able to leave this resentment behind because we haven’t been able to have an honest conversation about it.
This is a fantastic account of the impact of resentment on relationships. It is intuitive for us to avoid conflict, to try to “forgive and forget” and to “go with the flow” in order to dodge the discomfort of arguments and out of concern for our relationship. In some cases, there are issues that are not meant to be let go without a resolution, because rather than the problem going away, it just eats away at your relationship. You explained this fabulously!