ERP 158: How To Resolve Resentment In Your Relationship
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 158, “How to resolve resentment in your relationship.” In the last two episodes I’ve been focusing on the drama triangle – largely how we tend to interact in conflict, and how destructive the dynamics are within the drama triangle.
In episode 156 I gave you much more detail about the drama triangle and the roles of the three positions, and that is the persecutor, the rescuer, and the victim. I gave you examples around what this looks like in different positions, and then in episode 157 I offered more detailed exploration around what happens when we get stuck in that victim role and we start to adopt a victim orientation, and how that starts to really influence the way we perceive others, the way we experience experiences, and how we actually view ourselves.
More importantly, I discussed how to shift out of that victim position and get into a creator position. If you missed either ones of those episodes, I highly encourage you to check those out.
Before we get started, I want to again invite you, as I usually do, to drop into setting the intention and our attention on the goal and the focus of growing ourselves, growing our relationship. That’s the real center point of what I feel that I’m trying to offer you on these podcasts – an opportunity to really look at the full spectrum of what we might be encountered with in relationship, and the good, the bad and the mundane, that there is such a richness if we so choose to take that invitation and that opportunity.
As I’m naming the intention and inviting you to focus your attention on the growth orientation, it’s reminding me of a podcast that I did a while back, and it really contrasted the growth mindset to the fixed mindset. If you’re interested in that episode, I will for convenience put it on today’s show notes, so you can easily find that episode.
A real key consideration here is the openness, and the willingness to contemplate and be curious and wonder, that there could be more than what we are used to, or what we’ve known in the past, and that there could be an up-leveling, an evolving, and if we are open to that possibility, we can have a new experience… And that’s my wish for you – if you feel hardship or feel a block or a sense of stuckness, that there is a greater possibility.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find the most recent episodes there at the top. Today’s episode, again, is 158, “How to resolve resentment in your relationship.”
Okay, let’s turn towards today’s podcast, how to resolve resentment in your relationship. Truthfully, I was ready to move on to address some listeners’ topics and questions, because they’ve been waiting so patiently, which I really appreciate, and at the same time, I’ve had several clients express the concern of how to resolve old resentments, how to heal those resentments so that they can feel a sense of more openness, peace and harmony in their relationship, and so I wanted to spend a little more time finishing and rounding this out.
When we’re talking about an old resentment, what do we really mean? For me, I’m seeing an old resentment as a grudge, a negative feeling, or unresolved hurt that we may be harboring or holding onto from a past experience. Often, we will feel resentment when someone did or said something to us that we did not like, or have issue with… And this something often is something we have not come to terms with, we haven’t accepted, and we haven’t made peace with, and sometimes for really good reason – it’s not okay. However, that resentment question, does it actually help resolve that issue? Probably not.
We’re gonna look at today how to resolve some of these in a way that you can feel more empowered, because I wanna support you to feel a sense of reconciliation inside yourself, so that you can make a decision around how to be open and available for connection with your significant other.
As I may have mentioned in my previous podcast episodes about forgiveness, forgiveness is not about condoning bad behavior or liking a horrible act; it’s about, again, coming to terms with the fact that we can’t change what happened. We can’t control other people or control what happened to us in the past. It happened.
Today I’m gonna be encouraging and inviting more of a coming to terms and an acceptance than I am about real forgiveness, because the real forgiveness sometimes has that sensation of “I understand, I forgive you, I feel open-hearted towards you and I’ve very much released any harboring of negative emotions towards you, and I feel a sense of respect and regard and peace.” Now, even as I say those things, I still think you could feel that when you come to terms, but I think there’s a slight distinction between really wanting to be in relationship versus coming to terms and accepting, and then having some boundaries around “I’m not really interested in continuing this dynamic”, if that’s what it is.
One of the other things I wanna encourage as a resource too is the series I did about dealing with pain. Pain is a natural part of life, and sometimes when we are so focused – and I think this is just a natural human goal – to seek comfort and seek safety… Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if we are so focused on keeping safe and comfortable, we’re not actually growing or learning or expanding, and sometimes not fully being expressed. We’re really playing it safe.
So when we have that goal of safety and comfort, we could see any form of pain as bad. Truthfully living involves some level of pain. And how we deal with pain is critical. We can create an enormous amount of suffering by trying to fight it, by trying to ignore it, or trying to deny it, and fight against it… Whereas if we learn to face the pain, and how vulnerable that is, but we actually grow ourselves in a really profound way, being able to tolerate some level of discomfort, to be able to meet the pain and be with the pain, and then hence, we’re actually moving through it in a much more harmonious way and in an empowered way, in a way that we actually can befriend or learn some of the golden nuggets of what that experience holds.
Now, chronic pain is slightly different, but I think there’s even a way, as Luk Dewulf talks about it in his TED talk that I referenced heavily in that series, is that there’s a way to feel a sense of peace in it all. I encourage you to check out that series if you did not look at it, because I do think, again, it’s a real fallacy that we can move through life without experiencing hardship, loss, or upset. And when we partner with a significant other, that they’re gonna be perfect, or that we’re gonna be perfect.
In the episode with Dr. Fred Luskin he does such a wonderful job or really reality-checking and pointing out the fact that we tend to get into this fantasy world about our relationship, about our partner and about ourselves, and I think he really offers a real invitation to be humble about the imperfect, impermanent nature of things… And how we deal with that is very vulnerable, but also extremely essential in living, where we really can’t live fully if we are harboring all of this resentment, or even protection against pain.
As I mentioned in the last episode, 157, when we are experiencing repetitive, overwhelming external hardship and circumstances, it’s actually natural to feel a sense of victimhood from that. And I really wanna point out here, as I did in episode 156, and maybe even recapped in 157, that I’m not talking about the acute hurt and the acute pain of some level of devastation, hardship, betrayal injury. That requires attention and healing. I’m talking about a period of time where that acute phase is over, and how we are dealing with the identity of it all, essentially, that this happened to us, and that we can actually incorporate it into accepting and moving forward with integration, rather than trying to pretend or cut that off again, as it didn’t exist, or fight against it, but that is not real.
While we cannot change the fact that crappy things might have happened to us, or did happen to us, we can change how we deal with them, how we view them and how we perceive them.
In the book that I was referencing by David Emerald, The Power of TED – again, this is discussing the drama triangle – he quotes Henri Nouwen about forgiveness. Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.
I have a client that I’ve been working with who has really been in great contemplation about her marriage. She has two older children who are in college, and really truly she looks back on her life and feels such great loss, and a sense of resentment… One being she feels like she gave her husband her best years. She also has some significant health issues, and she feels as though the stress in their dynamic and the way in which he expressed himself to her caused so much stress, and possibly caused some of her physical illness and ailment. And third, she looks at the lack of support in her life – the lack of friendships, the lack of family and the lack of community, and she really holds her husband responsible and feeling that he really pressured and really advocated so strongly to move, and she didn’t feel like she really could say no.
And fourth, and most painful thing that she carries hurt and pain around is the fact that her two children have a lot of issue with their dad, her husband, and the way in which he did not empathize, did not support them emotionally, but also had outbursts of anger, and perhaps wasn’t very kind or fair in his communication. My client feels such grief and sadness around this.
When she started talking to me about her block, as she might call it – feeling as though she really loves her husband, but really can’t open her heart; that she feels these resentments get in the way, and she doesn’t know how to move forward… And when I probed about possible areas in her life where she feels a sense of loss or a sense of things that were unmet, expectations that were not fulfilled, or feeling a great level of this pain still, she laid out some of these areas through our discussion.
Recognizing that there’s resentment interfering with the emotional bond is the first step. The second step is identifying where those resentments lie; what’s the hurt connected to them, what’s the lost dream or the unfulfilled expectation or hope or wish? This really gives a curriculum for greater process.
With the client that I was just describing, as we were discovering these areas of resentment, that are big categories in her life, it allowed us to explore more deeply all that was involved. We’re still in process here, but she was able to recognize her unique upbringing in her family of origin, that also lended to her experience and possibly the way in which she showed up in these different instances.
It’s really important to note, again, that her husband is responsible for his behavior, the way in which he communicates his fear, his insecurity, his uncertainty… That is absolutely his responsibility. And how she chooses to relate to him is also part of her choice point. So if at all she has felt victimized by some of these circumstances, part of the invitation here, if we’re looking at a lost dream, as I talked about in episode 156 and 157, in the victim’s position, that as we start to explore the opportunity for healing, and feeling more empowered and shifting into the creator’s position, we can begin to look at the persecutor as a teacher.
Again, the persecutor might be an actual event, a circumstance, a condition or a person. Again, emphasizing, this is not to condone the circumstance, the condition or the person who might be behaving in persecuting ways, but what we do when we’re faced with that situation is really what I’m talking about here. Again, there’s an initial upset, there’s an initial crisis or acute phase that needs attention. Then, at some point, we are left with the choice – how do we come to terms, how do we integrate and how do we move forward. If we choose to hold on and harden and feel bitter and feel resentment, that’s often gonna impact our ability to live freely, individually, as well as the opportunity to create a new dynamic with our significant other, if in fact they’re the ones that perhaps engaged in persecuting ways. It doesn’t give us an opportunity to really get to a new level.
Many times we will hear people talk about “Can you see the gift? Can you see the lesson in the hardship?” Now, another way of saying this would be “What’s the piece of value?” Because again, it might be that the whole situation is extremely challenging, very difficult, and nothing we would ever choose, wish for, or even condone, as I said… The question then becomes less of “Do I like this?”, because of course, we don’t like it and we wouldn’t wish for it, but it becomes “How am I going to deal with this?”
Again, if we’re gonna be able to stand on our two feet in a centered, grounded place, being able to face what we dealt with – the hardship, the pain, the injury, the betrayal even – how do we reconcile? How do we accept and be at peace?
David Emerald in The Power of TED talks about persecutors being the teacher. Looking at how these challenges have taught us something. Now, again, this won’t be “Everything about it was beautiful” or “Everything about it had a lesson”, but there could be a nugget of value… And that then can be something that we can move forward with in a way that we can feel more empowered.
Emerald offers an exercise, and this might be something you’ve encountered before, but I actually did it, it didn’t take that long, and it was actually really helpful. It took me about 20 minutes. He suggests “Write a list (at least seven) of people, circumstances or conditions that you have felt great hardship in, and have felt victimized by”, so in some sense feeling persecuted by. Once you have listed the event, circumstance or condition, how can you look for the value, the gift or the lesson that you gleaned through that experience?
With the client that I was mentioning, part of what she’s been identifying and getting clear on is the need for boundaries and self-care. She has a tendency to feel overly responsible and caretake greatly for others, and leaving very little for herself. She has been willing to tolerate perhaps damaging, destructive behavior without setting boundaries… And feeling a struggle in how to advocate for herself, how to put her vote on the table; “Here’s what I would love…” or “How can we make this happen?” and really be in a co-creative process. That is something that has just felt difficult for her, and there’s lots of reasons why. But if she can work some of these aspects and get into practice, getting some support to do that, the experience of feeling healthy, strong and fulfilled in relationship, where her needs matter and she is taken care of, and it’s reciprocal, it’s give and take, and she feels as though she can learn on the people that are there for her and who love her when she needs to, that it’s okay for her to not always be the one carrying the burden.
And that when things don’t work for her, something crosses her boundary or is a violation, that she feels strong and clear and capable of asserting a boundary in a loving way, that allows for, again, that healthy, reciprocal relationship.
I imagine she would feel a sense of empowerment in the future… That she could feel like “Yes, that was all really difficult; I wouldn’t wanna do it again, I wouldn’t have chosen that for myself, and what I have learned and where I’ve grown into – I wouldn’t take that away. I’m grateful for that lesson and that learning”, and that she can have a new experience with her husband.
David Emerald talks about one of his hardships is losing his father, and that the death of his father challenged him to grow a sense of self as an adult, and that was something that even though it was a painful loss, and he grieved greatly, that he could recognize for him it allowed him to learn and grow something profound.
In my mid to late-twenties I worked as a director of a team program, and I essentially proposed a program and then ultimately decided what programs we would offer, what events and services that we would provide to these teens, and I really had the best intentions to offer a multi-faceted, holistic program, so that it would really help enrich these kids’ lives. At the same token, we didn’t really have a lot of resource and people, so it was difficult to execute it all, and I really gave it my all. I worked as much as I possibly could; often times I wasn’t getting the best sleep, or wasn’t eating…
Long story short, a couple years in, I began to have digestion issues, and real GI discomfort. A lot of bloating, and feeling gassy, and it just was really problematic. There were some other stressors going on in my life that I think really contributed to this experience, but as I sought support in the way of different healthcare providers and really was committed to feeling healthy, I really recognized the importance of self-care, and how I had really been operating on this Superwoman phenomenon, and how that’s not sustainable.
While this experience was incredibly uncomfortable and really limited my life at the time and began to feel chronic, and it lasted months and months and months, and I think it was even almost a year, and it was painful, and as I said, very limiting… But the lesson that I gleaned about self-care, and really investing in taking care of myself in a sustainable way was so valuable. I’m really grateful to say that through my investment of my time, my efforts, my energy and money into different healthcare providers, I was able to shift and learn that lesson, and incorporate and implement those practices, and I’m really happy to say that since that time, I do not have those symptoms and that experience anymore. There might be occasions where I might feel some digestive discomfort, but truly honestly, I don’t have those issues anymore.
In previous podcast episodes I’ve shared my story of what got me into the field of couples work, and it really was from a significant breakup that was devastating, and it really forced me to look at my fear of abandonment, or what was then my fear of abandonment, and really helped me get on this path of transformation and healing on a deep, deep level, so that I was able to really practice and grow into a sense of being grounded in myself, and connected to my true desire, and really to own it and be willing to be vulnerable about it, that I really truly know helped me cultivate the relationship that I have now with my husband.
Another client example – I’ve been working with this couple for a few sessions, and their dynamic is extremely painful; I’ll just talk about the wife’s experience. She has felt as though she has really prioritized her husband’s needs, really moved to be in a location that served his career, and has been understanding and flexible and accommodating, and her pain has lied around not feeling as though she matters, that she’s a priority, and that she’s important to her husband. Now, in fact, he loves her more than anything, and if anything, he gets fearful and avoids conflict because she means everything to him, and it brings up all his stuff.
Without going into the dynamic that’s so painful, what I wanna point to here is that she feels victimized by this dynamic, and really by her husband, and is angry at him, and is angry at herself for putting up with it, and really at a loss, and is in such devastating pain around it. Now, in my position, I could see the possibility of them creating a new dynamic, where she gets to feel how important she is to him, how much he loves her, how much she matters, and how her needs and preferences and feelings are taken into account… And for her to feel, again, that sense of importance and priority.
I imagine if she learns the skill to advocate for her worth, for her priority, for her importance in a way that her partner can respond and engage with, that gives her that experience, would be powerful. What hardships have you endured, through circumstance, through someone else, or perhaps a condition that has caused great difficulty in your life? And ask yourself, do you still hold resentment? And if so, possibly looking at what is it that you lost, what is the longing or the expectation or the hope that didn’t happen? Just encountering that difficulty, that pain a little bit, just so you can name it… Without going into the great despair of it, but just to be able to identify it. And then what happens for you if you ask the question “How did this experience challenge me to learn and grow?” What is the lesson that the person or situation brought to your life, or possibly currently bringing to your life? “How and what can I learn from this experience? What is the gift hidden in this situation, no matter how difficult it appears?”
These questions come from David Emerald, in The Power of TED. These questions prompt the shift in mindset, less about all the ways that it hurt and all the ways that it was wrong and not okay, to “What is it that I can do, given this circumstance, to take care of myself, to advocate for myself, to really support my growth?” My guess is that if you stay with these questions, in a place of curiosity and wonderment, there will be something that you can find value in; something that you can shift into, that feels meaningful, and possibly powerful in growing you and your experience in relationship or otherwise… Because again, mentioned in episode 157, when we are caught in the victim orientation, we’re likely to cycle in what feels very damaging and destructive and really doesn’t create solutions or solve problems. The real key to shifting that is focusing on what is it that you want to experience, what is it that you want to create? What’s the vision, the dream or the goal? Generally, this is the way to shift from a victim orientation into more of the creator orientation… However, when we are feeling stuck and blocked by resentment and we’re looking at what is it that we want to experience, it might feel totally incongruent.
I talked about with my client – she was talking about having given her husband the best years of her life, and she cannot get those years back. However, if she shifts the question into “What is it that that experience was teaching me? What is it that I can learn from that?”, possibly being able to glean that insight, those lessons, to then contribute to what she’s creating in the future, could be game-changing. So when we can shift our focus into “What is the lesson? What’s the learning? What’s the growth?” the value that we can identify, however small, that can then give us something to move forward with. And when we can feel some sense of ownership around what we can be responsible for, it shifts the focus around what happened to us and how that dictated our circumstances, and we’re victimized by that – we just feel like that can continue to happen, or we don’t know what we would do differently in the future, and “Gosh forbid, I hope nothing happens…” It just feels very powerless and hopeless at times.
To shift into the growth and the learning then does give you some curriculum to practice with, to start working with and hopefully implement, so that you can experience a different outcome.
This reminds me of a difficult experience that I had dating my now-husband. We’ve been together for — it’ll be 13 years in March, and it was in the first couple years. We were in a relationship, we were together, and he broke up with me twice. Now, the time difference between the two breakups I think was at least nine months, maybe a year, so it wasn’t back-to-back… But as I mentioned earlier in this episode, I had dealt with a lot of loss and had a fear of abandonment that I was now aware of, and was practicing new skills and tools with him… And these breakups were as much about him as it was about me, and I think it really allowed us to deepen in an understanding around how we were relating, and what was coming up for him… And again, I view all of this as curriculum for developing.
But the thing I wanna comment on here is that the first break-up, I was super-hurt, really sad, and essentially heartbroken. The second breakup I was hurt, but I also had much more clarity, and I was basically really identifying “This doesn’t feel good. I’m not into this at all”, and I remember — so when he proposed getting back together again, I was like “I’m not interested in this rollercoaster ride, breaking up, getting back together again, and off and on, off and on.” And so I really committed to myself that if this was to present itself again, and he would kind of try to break up with me or [unintelligible 00:35:12.27] with me, I would basically say “I can’t do this anymore. As much as I love you, as much as I see a future with you, I’m not interested in this way of relating”, and I was committed to myself in that.
What really helped here is that I did feel a sense of injustice in the way that he was breaking up with me on these two occasions, because he really wasn’t turning to me with his hurt and his difficulty, he was turning away… And really feeling overwhelmed, and there were some things that he was feeling inadequate about and broke up with me, but it didn’t allow me to be engaged with him and for us to work it together.
So really the thing that I gleaned in my learning, that it was teaching me, is how to stand up for my value, my worth, and that I wasn’t gonna do this, and that I could feel, again, the significance of what I had to offer, and that I wasn’t gonna just dispose of that with someone that wasn’t willing to be in with me. And that felt like a huge learning, to not only get it on an insight level, but to be able to be in the practice of it.
This was a great confidence booster for me, that I could have my own back, that I could feel that sense of self-worth and value, and really believe it on a kinesthetic, full level… So I really believed that that was a lesson in that experience of him breaking up with me.
In closing, I wanna just underscore the importance of recognizing when you feel resentful, and you feel that sense of closed kind of harboring pain, or issue with someone… And if it’s impacting your experience and possibly even contributing to that victim orientation, to just identify it.
And then secondly, naming any specific aspects about it. It might just be very clear that it’s this one thing, but in my client’s example, she felt resentment towards her husband, but it was many resentments… So you might need to get a little more specific. And then possibly take David Emerald’s questions, and be in a place of wonderment and curiosity around what this past experience or current experience of difficulty is inviting you to step into, in the way of learning, of value or of growth, what’s the opportunity here… And see if you can identify anything that is significant for you.
This then becomes your curriculum, whether or not it’s something you can identify that you actually already learned, if it was in the past and you did some version of this and you can feel the gift of that learning and you can kind of solidify it in yourself and reinforce the power of this, that it allowed you to move forward in a much more empowered way… Or perhaps it gives you the curriculum to move forward in a different way, that again, cultivates an experience that supports you, fulfills you and grows you.
Just to recap that again – so name it, specify it, unpack it through the questions to get the learnings and the wisdom around what it’s asking of you, and fourth, use it as curriculum.
Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you would like access to today’s show notes, please visit my website. That’s DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find the episodes there. Today’s episode, again, is 158, “How to resolve resentments in your relationship.”
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Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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