Ever felt a bit resentful of your partner?

Like you’ve worked extremely hard all year and now you’re feeling burned out and emotionally neglected in the run up to Christmas because your partner hasn’t worked HALF as hard as you…

…and don’t seem to get how you’re feeling or what you need?

A female client who’s the ambitious breadwinner in her marriage asked me a question yesterday that made me wince. “Should I just suck it up, be more feminine and rub my husband’s ego to keep the peace and make him happy?”. Yikes!


I told her: “No. Doing that is going to just lead you to abandon yourself even further, trying to fit the mold of what you think you need to be in this relationship. You'll become resentful, and eventually explode, have a nervous breakdown, or leave him for someone that you can actually relax and be yourself with".


What DOES work is:

Are you fantasizing over someone who isn’t your long-term romantic partner? I see this a LOT and it DOESN'T necessarily mean that your relationship is doomed.


What it DOES mean, is that your needs aren’t getting met fully in your relationship. So don't panic, freak out, or ignore what you're feeling. Instead: get curious. What it is about this new person that you're craving? What NEEDS do you believe will get met through them?

The fact you’re arguing a lot DOESN'T mean that things can’t be ironed out. Unless the arguments you’re having are about fundamental clashes of values - like, infidelity, religion etc.

90% of the time, the reason you’re stuck in a cycle of arguments is because you’re carrying around a ton of internal triggers that are making you spiral into conflict …when you don’t actually need to.

Have you ever struggled to tap into your gut instinct about what to do with your relationship when you’ve felt pangs of uncertainty about your future with your partner (especially on the cusp of the new year)?

And you’ve struggled to know what is your gut instinct, and what is…fear?

Here's the thing:

The mainstream idea that you can and should always trust your gut is very problematic and reductive. Most people’s gut instinct is utterly riddled with fear, old outdated childhood messages, and past pains that totally shroud it.

If your partner is doing (or not doing) something that bothers you and you really wish would change, you might worry that you're asking for too much, or that you two are fundamentally incompatible.

But chances are good that you're NOT asking for too much, and this thing that's bothering you isn't really a huge marker of incompatibility.

What's more likely true is that deep down, you don't feel worthy of this thing that you want from your partner.

In my experience, the most accomplished of women can fall into a total state of internal collapse when it comes to conflict with their partners. (I can relate to this all too well - both with myself, and with endless female clients that I support).

It isn’t necessarily because your partner is the wrong man for you, though, or that you are fundamentally incompatible, or doomed together. Nor does it mean that your future is bleak and you cannot trust them in it.

If this is you, then my guess is that you are the breadwinner in your family and work extremely hard. You’re tired.

And my guess too, is that when you ask for what you need, your partner gets defensive (even if just a little bit), and more times than not, things start to spiral into another argument…so you just decide to do it yourself anyway.

As we head into the holiday season and the new year looms before us, many of you will be feeling mixed emotions.

There is that excited feeling of the festive season, those old childhood pangs of joy and delight at a time of the year that is so deeply filled with warm feelings, comfort, and deliciousness.

And then there’s likely that sense of time running out.

The year is coming to a close, the holidays will fly by before you, and New Years Eve will be here before you know it.

2025 will be here, and that blank canvas, that expanse of opportunity will lie ahead of you.

If you’re an ambitious professional who’s feeling unsure about your partner because you’re carrying all the responsibilities and taking the lead on virtually everything in your relationship…

…and all you feel is alone and unsupported in it…

…and sometimes even like you’re maybe doing too much (though you also feel like you can’t fully depend on them)...

…the way forward for you lies in:

When you are expected to guide the therapist with what you want to talk about, it can be near impossible to go to the murkier, darker recesses of your subconscious. You may go there accidentally, but you certainly are unlikely to want to stay there. In fact, the human brain is pretty incredible at repressing and hiding things from us. So that keeps you stuck at the superficial, surface level of things.

Beneath this superficial veneer, though, is where all of your deeper issues lie. These are composed of your subconscious blocks, beliefs, core wounds, and other bits of conditioning that you will have accrued since childhood - between the ages of 0-8 in fact.

He started to subconsciously actively avoid spending time alone where he’d be left with his own thoughts – about the marriage, about how he was feeling, about his needs.

He started working out more, going to the gym.

He started spending more time on social media, scrolling LinkedIn. He even found himself connecting with a few women on there, though obviously not looking to do anything wrong or immoral, they just seemed to have interesting careers - and his career was giving him life.

Before he knew it, years had passed by…

My own behavior as a woman who spent much of her adult life biting her tongue and squashing down her feelings at fear of causing drama, being too much, or upsetting her partner testifies to this.

I know that when I have felt upset, or hurt, or betrayed, or sensed any disconnect with my partner, and I have squashed it down because I dread revealing it to them, or I am simply too busy or need to rush to work, or respond to emails, or just want to have a peaceful night, and so have squashed it down…

...you know you’re not feeling 100% sure about your relationship and it’s frustrating you. In fact, it’s giving you anxiety. And you’re not sure that you can keep avoiding the issue and burying yourself into your work because…well, when you’re not able to sleep at night, blinking into the dark at 3am wondering ‘what do I do?’ it’s clearly not something you can ignore.

I am so grateful, so unspeakably grateful, that I never gave up on creating the healthy, loving, secure relationship that I know now I deserve.

I am so grateful that I fought for more.

That even when things felt dark, and my future felt so bleak…

…alone, blinking into the dark of our apartment, fighting back tears at midnight, unable to sleep…

…exhausted from endless marriage counseling, processing with my therapist, and feeling afraid of my future…

…feeling alone, unsupported, and scared…

…in my 30s, wanting a family, wanting stability, wanting to finally feel true love and live a full life…

I’m so grateful that I fought for more.

Plenty of people simply marry the wrong person.

There is such a thing as marrying the wrong person.

And the worst thing is, you may only find this out AFTER many years have passed.

Typically after the honeymoon has worn off.

The hormones have calmed down.

The oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and all the delicious cocktail of love-inducing feelings that we get submerged into when we fall in love…have worn off.

You do not have as much time as you want.

The morbid reality of this is that we waste so much of our lives faffing about.

Achieving very little.

Complaining about things.

Offloading to our friends, rather than finding tangible solutions

Scrolling on instagram, or LinkedIn, procrastinating…rather than looking inside to see how we’re really feeling

Burying our heads in the sand, numbing out, avoiding things…drinking that extra glass of wine, watching that Netflix show rather than digging deep into WHY we’re numbing out

One of the hardest things we can experience in a relationship is the feeling of uncertainty and indecision. When we feel stuck in a state of limbo, unable to move forward and relax into the relationship, or unable to exit and start our life anew, we can feel trapped.

It can feel exhausting, in fact.

Being in this liminal space between wanting to stay, loving them, and making it work…but also feeling unsupported, alone, and afraid of your future together…

Feeling like you have to walk around on eggshells a fair amount of the time…

Feeling like there is something wrong with you, maybe you’re fault finding, nit picking, seeing flaws where there shouldn't be any…

Or maybe you’re actually right to be feeling anxious and nervous, maybe there are actually red flags going on…

Maybe you should stay and double down…maybe you should go and find an easier relationship…

…is incredibly hard.