What’s the Root Cause of Resentment in Marriage?
All resenting stems from resisting. Resentment comes from resisting another person’s actions, behaviors and habits. Instead of allowing the person to be, we silently resist who they are. That silent resistance turns into spoken or unspoken anger, distance and mutual hardship.
What Can We Do When We Feel Resentment in Marriage?
The absolute best thing we can do when feeling resentment is to go from resisting to enlisting. Instead of feeling like we must either fight or silently suffer, we can enlist the other person. We enlist by lovingly teaching and showing by example. We show the proper way through our being, and we enlist our partner to join in. We keep blame and fault out of the equation. Through love, we heal resentment and we are more likely to invoke change from the other person.
When people feel attacked, they never learn. When one partner suffers in silence, the other partner never learns. Only through love, kindness and patience has anyone been able to grow and evolve. Not everyone will change at the pace we might wish them to, but at least you did not lose your inner peace. Everyone has their own demons to work through. We can’t control anyone. But, if we are unable to be that patient and loving teacher, that only shows us the work we still have to do on ourselves. This is what Gandhi meant when he said, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.”
How to Survive Feeling Resentment in a Marriage
The key is to not change how we cope, but rather to change how we go about our social lives in the first place. If we approach our social lives in the right way, there would be no need for coping at all. If we seek out companionship thinking it will make us happy, we are making our happiness dependent on temporary circumstances that are bound to change. If we tap into our inner peace, love and joy, the whole world and all of its pleasures simply become the icing on the cake — you can take it or leave it.
The sage knows that some people will ghost, others will flake, and others will lash out and reenact old trauma. This is the way of the world — everyone going through their own journey. The most we can do is discover ourself, then we can share our joys and sorrows with other folks who are in a similar place on their own journey. We can welcome all newcomers, say goodbye peacefully to those whose paths diverge, and we can embrace and appreciate every step of the way.
