How can I clear resentment between me and my partner?
The longer we have been together with someone, the more likely it seems that we are going to have some resentment for each other. It doesn’t always have to be the case, but it sadly often is.
I see this especially in couples who are busy, working long hours, traveling extensively, and finding themselves locked into tight schedules where there is little time to spend ‘processing’ and ‘wallowing’ in their feelings.
In fact, if you’re a career driven professional, you have very little bandwidth indeed to waste on figuring these things out, and so it's inevitable that over time small injuries will accrue and turn into large resentments. This is precisely why I specialize in working with career-driven executives and entrepreneurs who work long hours, run tight schedules, and don’t have time for endless years of therapy ‘processing’ their feelings.
Resentment, in this case, is that type of insidious baggage we carry around, aimed towards our partner. It might be that we feel hurt by something that they did many years ago. A minor infidelity, a moment of trust that was broken, a painful comment. It might be that it’s a more real time resentment we feel day to day as our partner berates us, calls us names, or says things that hurt us. Whether it’s from the past or accrued in our day to day moments, resentment can grow.
Because as humans, we have never really been taught how to be good or skilled at relationships - and we certainly have never really learned the art of productive communication during conflict, repair, forgiveness, and finding nourishing ways to get our needs met. If you’ve been reading my content, you will know that I talk a lot about how ill equipped we are by society to create nourishing relationships (the type where conflict becomes an opportunity for connection, and we grow deeper in love with each other rather than further apart). We grow up raised by ideas from Hollywood, the media, societal conditioning, outdated ideas from our parents, and dysfunctional stereotypes from religion. We rarely learn how to clear resentments, process pain, or deal with hardship in our relationship effectively.
As such, it's almost inevitable that resentment will grow and build over time.
Because we aren’t clearing it. At least, not effectively enough.
This is something I see consistently with my clients. Relationships that are riddled with resentment, whether overt or subtle.
It shows up by hindering their sex lives, getting in the way of libido, attraction, and desire. It shows up by creating a cadence of recurring conflict, the same arguments resurfacing time and time again. It shows up as the passive aggressive eye roll, the sigh of exasperation, the slamming of the door.
At times, it can show up as depression. Anger turns inward, when it feels like there’s no way out through it. When we feel stuck, paralyzed by it, trapped and unsure of what to do, that resentment can breed a malaise that leads to low self esteem, low confidence, and depressive thoughts.
In sum - resentment is not good.
It tires out the relationship, gnawing away at its edges, spreading its cancerous destruction at the love that’s left until….well, until there is nothing left.
So, it’s clear we need to clear it.
But how the heck do we clear it?
It boils down to two things:
Recognising where your unconscious core wounds have been triggered in the resentment
Identifying what your needs are to clear it
Taking action on that.
The reason our resentments can feel so strong is because they have a strong impact in the first place. They will typically be wounds that we feel on a deep, unconscious level, since they touch the deep, unconscious parts of ourselves.
The wounded inner child, the hurt innocent part of us that has deep pain from our past. I call these our ‘core wounds’. The initial injuries that we received in our upbringing from the ages of 0 - 8 (give or take). Now this doesn't mean our parents or primary caregivers are bad people, just that they, like everyone else on the planet, are not perfect, and their actions may have hurt us inadvertently. That’s being human.
So if I received a wound around my sense of safety as a child, and my sense of being good enough, or worthy enough, to receive love…then anything that happens with my partner to trigger that injured part of me, that child like part of me that has been hurt, is going to create serious pain.
I won’t realize what is going on consciously but it will be there, unconsciously, hurting.
What I may feel consciously is a sense of being irritated, or upset, or angry, but I won’t necessarily know why.
And so that hurt will continue to fester, without me knowing why, and over time it will build up and get worse, because I have not tended to it (because I don’t know the core reasons why).
Similarly, to point 2, I won’t know what that childlike part of me really needs.
I’ll know what I think I need…them to say sorry, to give me a hug, to correct their behavior…but I won’t necessarily know what I need deep down to alleviate the pain of that childhood injury.
So I can’t speak up about it, because I don’t know what I am speaking up about. I can’t say something in the moment, or later, because I don’t know what it is that is really going on for me.
So to solve for that, and to address the wound and heal it, I have to get laser clear on what it is that I need - and how to get that.
The final step is, of course I have to act on these.
It is not sufficient to ‘know’ these things, but you have to act on them.
Once you have identified the core wound injury, what you need to feel healed, and you have acted on that, you will have successfully addressed the resentment - and cleared it.
When both partners do this, you create a tremendous amount of transformation in a very short amount of time. Because you are getting to the root of the issue and tackling it at that level.
Of course, identifying your core wounds can feel tricky if you don’t know how (we rarely get taught this, and therapy does not cut it), and identifying what you need can feel even harder.
This is where a professional well versed in working with the unconscious mind can be a game changer, like myself.
What’s more, I’ve had over 15+ years of experience in studying the unconscious mind and its workings since I began my training in this field in 2007, and have taken tons of career-driven professionals my signature process to repair their relationship.
If you’d like to learn more about how I can help, you can DM me HELP and I will be glad to share the various ways we can partner together to support you.
I have 3 main ways to partner together, all to varying investment degrees and levels of 'intensity' depending on what you need to solve for. Rates range from $500 to $11,000 USD and take anything from an hour or two, to 6 months.
All of my solutions are built with busy career-driven professionals in mind who have 15 minuets per day to spare, max, and roughly 30 - 60 minutes on weekends or weekdays to do the deeper work.
DM me HELP to learn more!
