Episode 134: Why We Resent the People We Love Most
The Hidden Roots of Resentment in Marriage
Why We Resent the People We Love Most
Most resentment in marriage doesn't begin with anger.
It begins with hurt.
Feeling unheard. Feeling unsupported. Feeling alone.
At first, those feelings may seem small. Maybe you're carrying more of the household responsibilities than your spouse realizes. Maybe you've asked for help, connection, or understanding, but nothing seems to change. Maybe you're quietly struggling with disappointment while trying to convince yourself it's not a big deal.
But pain that goes unaddressed has a way of growing.
Over time, that hurt can harden into resentment.
What Resentment Really Is
Many people think resentment and anger are the same thing, but they're not.
Anger is often temporary. It's a natural emotional response that comes and goes.
Resentment is different. It's anger that never fully gets resolved. It's the wound that keeps getting reopened. It's the frustration that lingers long after the original conflict has passed.
The longer resentment stays in a relationship, the more dangerous it becomes.
Eventually, spouses stop seeing each other as teammates and begin seeing each other as obstacles—or even enemies.
How Resentment Starts
Resentment often grows when one person feels like they're carrying a burden alone.
Maybe it's parenting responsibilities.
Maybe it's emotional labor.
Maybe it's financial stress.
Maybe it's the feeling that your spouse isn't emotionally available when you need them most.
Whatever the source, the common thread is usually the same: pain that isn't being acknowledged, shared, or healed.
When we feel overwhelmed and unsupported, we naturally start asking ourselves, "Why am I carrying this by myself?"
And if we don't find healthy answers, it's easy to blame the person closest to us.
The Hidden Source of Resentment
One of the most interesting ideas about resentment is that it doesn't always come from what our spouse is doing.
Sometimes it comes from the gap between the life we have and the life we hoped for.
We know who we want to be.
We know what we want our marriage to look like.
And when reality doesn't match that vision, we start looking for someone to blame.
Unfortunately, our spouse often becomes the easiest target.
It's much simpler to focus on what they're doing wrong than to ask ourselves harder questions:
What am I missing in my own life?
What needs have I never expressed?
What changes am I afraid to make?
What responsibility do I need to take for my own growth?
Those questions aren't easy, but they often reveal what's happening underneath the resentment.
Expectations Matter More Than We Realize
Many resentments are rooted in unmet expectations.
The challenge is that expectations change throughout marriage.
The expectations we had as newlyweds may not work when we're raising children. The expectations we had in our twenties may not fit our lives in our forties or fifties.
Yet many couples never revisit them.
Instead, they continue holding each other accountable to expectations that no longer make sense.
Healthy marriages require regular conversations about changing needs, responsibilities, priorities, and dreams.
When those conversations don't happen, resentment often fills the silence.
Why Feeling Understood Changes Everything
One of the most powerful ways to interrupt resentment is surprisingly simple:
"Help me understand."
Not "You're wrong."
Not "You never listen."
Not "You don't care."
Just three words:
Help me understand.
When we approach our spouse with curiosity instead of criticism, something shifts.
Defensiveness lowers.
Empathy grows.
Connection becomes possible again.
Being understood doesn't automatically solve every problem, but it often creates the safety needed to start solving them together.
The Courage to Take Ownership
One difficult truth about resentment is that we can't always wait for our spouse to remove every obstacle in our lives.
Sometimes healing begins when we take responsibility for our own growth.
That might mean finding new interests, pursuing education, setting healthier boundaries, asking for support, seeking counseling, or finally speaking honestly about what's been hurting us.
Resentment often thrives when we feel powerless.
It weakens when we reclaim our sense of agency.
This doesn't mean your spouse has no responsibility. Healthy relationships require effort from both people.
But lasting change often starts when we stop waiting and start acting.
Resentment Isn't the End
Every marriage experiences hurt.
Every marriage experiences disappointment.
And most marriages will encounter resentment at some point.
The goal isn't to avoid it forever.
The goal is to recognize it sooner.
When resentment appears, see it as information rather than a final verdict on your relationship.
Ask yourself:
What pain am I carrying?
What need isn't being met?
What expectation needs to be revisited?
What growth is this resentment pointing me toward?
Most importantly, invite your spouse into the conversation.
Not as the enemy.
Not as the problem.
But as your partner.
Because resentment doesn't have to be the end of a marriage.
Sometimes it's the signal that something important needs attention—and that healing, growth, and deeper connection are still possible.
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0:00
Speaker 1
Do you resent your spouse?
Do you feel unsupported, unheard, undervalued?
Do you have unmet needs or even betrayed in your marriage?
If you're carrying hurt, exhaustion, or disappointment in your marriage, this episode today is just for you.
0:15
Speaker 2
Today we're going to be talking about resentment.
How it builds, how we get stuck in it and can't get out of it.
How we start seeing our spouses an enemy.
And most importantly, we're going to talk about how to get unstuck from those feelings that are pulling a marriage down.
0:35
Speaker 1
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast helping you become an intelligent spouse.
0:41
Speaker 2
I'm Heidi Hastings.
0:42
Speaker 1
And I'm Scott Hastings.
0:44
Speaker 2
We are two doctors, 2 researchers, 2 spouses, 2 lovers, and two grammatically different human beings coming together for one purpose, to change the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.
1:05
Welcome to marriage IQ.
I'm Doctor Heidi Hastings.
1:09
Speaker 1
Doctor Scott Hastings.
1:10
Speaker 2
Thanks for being with us today.
So Scott, I read a really fantastic article this week from Psychology Today called Unshackle Your Resentment, and it's by Doctor Susie Ferrarello and she's a PhD.
1:28
And it really opened my eyes to some parts of what resentment is that I hadn't thought about before.
It really helped me see it in a different way.
So I would love to kind of explore together some of the things that she says about resentment and then share some of our own experiences with.
1:48
Speaker 1
It I'd love to do that.
What is resentment, my love?
1:52
Speaker 2
That's a great question.
I think we throw the word around interchangeably with the word anger sometimes.
2:00
Speaker 1
Yeah.
2:01
Speaker 2
But really, resentment is long term anger over some kind of wounding that's happened within the relationship that we just can't let go of.
2:12
Speaker 1
OK, So what I hear you saying is anger is something that's kind of a a short quick thing that goes away.
Resentment is maybe toxic long lasting anger that's never quite resolved.
2:28
Does that sound right?
Yep.
2:30
Speaker 2
That sounds exactly.
2:31
Speaker 1
Right.
Because I, I know in one of the earlier episodes, I think it was episode 122, where we had Davina Hen talk about turning anger into your ally.
Not necessarily that it's bad all the time, but it's there to help you.
2:47
Speaker 2
We will show a little clip right now.
When I got angry and I didn't lead with aggression, but I LED with action and empowerment and advocacy, that's where my self respect came in.
That's where my husband's respect for me came in, and I started to see that it could really be this catalyst for really beautiful changes in our lives.
3:09
And that's when it very slowly, incrementally changed the entire way that I view anger.
3:15
Speaker 1
It's there to help you, whereas resentment is you never quite been able to let go of.
3:22
Speaker 2
That you never move out of it, and especially when there are multiple things that keep building on each other.
So one way this might show up is with sexual betrayal that happens over time or happens multiple times.
3:38
There's a lot of resentment.
3:39
Speaker 1
I can see how that resentment would be really large.
Yeah.
And someone who's been betrayed.
3:45
Speaker 2
Right.
And also in social media and other platforms.
I really see a lot of resentment in marriages lately when the woman is working, the man is working, and yet she is taking the emotional load from caring for the children all by herself.
4:04
She's taking the household load of the labor there in the home, and she's just feeling exhausted.
And so over and over and over, she's struggling, she's feeling wounded, she's dealing with pain of some sort, and it's not being resolved.
4:20
Speaker 1
So that's where she would the wife would resent her husband for because it's not noticing, it's not doing his job, you know, not helping out at home or something.
4:31
Speaker 2
Or they may have talked about it and he's not willing.
OK, so sometimes it's because one partner silences themselves and they just Mull on it and Mull on it until it festers and it becomes bigger and bigger.
4:47
Speaker 1
And then from the husband's point of view, maybe he resents how much his wife spends money on different things, or he might resent how much time his wife spends on social media but not with him.
5:03
So it kind of goes both ways, right?
We all have resentments and we have things that are maybe unresolved that have brought us either a lot of anger or low level anger that we just can't seem to let go of.
5:15
Speaker 2
And disappointments and expectations both really fold into that as well.
One of the more common types of resentment that I see in women is that they feel like their spouse is not emotionally available.
5:31
Speaker 1
I get that.
I get that a lot.
There's a lot of guys who just emotionally are unavailable.
5:39
Speaker 2
They took out when they're home.
Yeah.
Why do they do that?
5:42
Speaker 1
For a lot of reason that those guys do.
Yep.
5:47
Speaker 2
She had these expectations of a happily ever after relationship where she's cherished and where she feels like they have deep connection with each other.
Typically a lot of the focus from both people or one person is focused on kids.
6:06
And so that does cause a lot of resentment, probably from both sides, when the kids become the center of their relationship.
6:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, yes, I can see that too.
A husband might resent his wife for spending a lot of time with children and putting her focus on children and not on him.
6:23
Speaker 2
And for whatever reason, if they are having sex, it's not deeply connecting, it's just kind of going through the motions.
6:30
Speaker 1
Transactional.
6:32
Speaker 2
Outside of the bedroom, there's really nothing.
6:35
Speaker 1
So it can go both ways, right?
And.
6:37
Speaker 2
What's the hardest to get out of is when I resent you and you resent me.
We both made each other the enemy.
6:44
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's hard.
6:46
Speaker 2
Because when we're ruminating in the thoughts that start with anger, but again, long term anger then moves into resentment and it feels a lot like quicksand that we can't get out of.
6:59
Speaker 1
This is really touching on a nerve, I think, for a lot of people who are married and maybe they haven't even thought about it.
So that's our job to help bring this to light, talk about it intelligently and come up with some solutions.
7:15
Speaker 2
Stick with us because we're going to show you how to pull out of it and how to help the relationship heal from it.
Yeah.
So, Scott, have you personally ever felt resentful towards me?
7:29
Speaker 1
You know, I tend to just not feel resentful toward you in general.
But I do recall specifically when we were living in Arizona, little rural mountain community for 10 years, there are some things that I resented.
7:46
And one of them is one thing we just talked about and that is putting our children as a priority.
And I kind of felt like I was playing second fiddle to the children.
7:58
Speaker 2
And to any guys who might be listening, we would love for you to drop a comment and let us know.
Is this really a problem?
8:06
Speaker 1
Do you feel the same way or am I just one guy who's going through it?
8:09
Speaker 2
We really want to know if that's true.
We probably need to do an episode on it.
8:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, no, I know it is.
There's a lot of men who have talked about that with me, that resentment that builds up because their wives are into their kids.
That happened.
It was hard.
8:26
Speaker 2
I can see that that was the case being right there in the middle of.
8:32
Speaker 1
How about you would imagine it'd be easy to resent me because I'm a very flawed individual?
8:38
Speaker 2
We both are very flawed, but that's how we learn and we grow and that's how we become better is by noticing some of those.
But I would say shortly after we got married, you went to medical school and that was really busy for four years.
8:54
We didn't see a lot of you, but we did to some extent.
You were mostly just studying and then three years of residency you were working 120 hours a week and so I saw you about every 3rd day and you were usually sleeping most of the time.
9:09
Plus we owned a really old 1930s home and.
9:15
Speaker 1
In Fort Wayne, IN.
9:16
Speaker 2
It was a fun project to pull up the floors, pull off the wallpaper, paint, refurbish things, put in new light fixtures and new ceiling fans and just make it so cute.
9:31
Speaker 1
I have not done anything crafty before or since that project.
Home improvement.
I was like, yeah, the handyman back then.
9:40
Speaker 2
Yeah, so we both knew that this was a limited time of our life, that it was going to be like that.
I guess when you look back, maybe in some ways.
We paused some parts of our marriage during that time, but when you got your first big real job working as a physician?
10:00
Speaker 1
Yes.
10:01
Speaker 2
I thought everything was going to change and all of the parts of that, we're going to go away and we were going to be united as a family.
We're going to be together on parenting, spend more time together as a family.
And I think the first couple of years, not only were you senior patients in the clinic, but if they were hospitalized, you'd have to go see them in the hospital in the morning, do rounds and then after clinic you would also go back to the hospital and.
10:33
Speaker 1
Work in the ER too.
Yeah, that's right.
10:37
Speaker 2
And that was a lot.
10:38
Speaker 1
That works non-stop, which made me into a better physician because I got to see everything, but I was always there.
10:47
Speaker 2
But I remember having the conversation over and over and over again that please, can you come home earlier?
This is so hard.
All of the sudden, instead of our little small home that we had in Indiana, we had a fairly large home.
And with four little kids, I think between the ages of two and 12:00 or so, it was really, really hard to keep the house clean.
11:11
We hadn't even put in a yard for at least a year or so.
I remember a friend came over and helped me put in the sod.
Meilene, bless her heart, she was so good.
And the kids helped us.
And I was trying to help out with the finances at the medical office, run kids where they went, go to lessons, get involved in sports, help with homework, science fair projects.
11:37
And I felt really alone.
And I felt like when I kept asking you, can you please be home earlier, It's just wearing on me.
That was kind of like a wound, I guess, that was really hurting me.
I remember feeling like I was about ready to have a heart attack with Hunter.
11:56
Speaker 1
Yeah, he was very.
11:57
Speaker 2
Very stressful.
11:58
Speaker 1
He's great now.
12:00
Speaker 2
Such an Angel now, but he was really, really hard.
And I think through all of that, I started to gain more and more resentment.
12:10
Speaker 1
You know, I think it sounds to me, honey, that resentment is coming from both the anger that we might acknowledge and maybe anger that flies under the radar screen that we don't really even recognize there.
12:25
But I think that happens for a lot of us because we don't sit down with ourselves and ask ourselves, why do I feel this way?
What is happening in my life to feel this way and then bringing it to the forefront, I think that's probably the first thing today is that if you don't know what's bringing that resentment, you can't fix it.
12:48
Speaker 2
Right.
And you're not going to talk about it with each other?
12:51
Speaker 1
And you're not even going to know to talk about it.
You just resent your spouse.
12:55
Speaker 2
I think that's a really good point.
And to add on to that, I would say that when we're feeling pain or wounding or hurt in our marriage, we really want our spouse to hold that pain with us to help relieve it, or to just hold on to us and say we've got this together.
13:18
Or if our spouse isn't available to help come up with some solutions that will help diminish the pain.
And so really, perhaps carrying pain alone is one of the big instigators of that resentment.
13:33
Speaker 1
So, Heidi, would it be fair to say that resentment is closely tied to expectations?
Sure.
If I have expectations of the role that you play as wife and mother, and there's a lot of them, or let's say there are expectations I have that I don't even know I have, Again, it's flying under the radar screen.
13:54
That can breed.
I think a lot of anger that, as you said earlier, turns into resentment because I just have so many expectations of you and you have me.
14:06
Speaker 2
We have a really great episode on expectations.
Take a look at this.
Doctor Jim McNulty from Florida State University in a study from 2016 found that high expectations don't work well if you have too much stress, too little time, or poor communication skills.
14:25
So regardless of if you both are on the same page about some of the expectations, if you can't invest socially with communication skills or your time or because you're too stressed, it's going to end poorly.
14:41
So.
14:41
Speaker 1
We we need to be checking ourselves.
Is my expectation too high?
Is it too low?
14:47
Speaker 2
And when we're looking for realistic expectations, we need to look at our stress.
Are we talking about this and am I invested in my relationship?
So back to that episode on expectations, again, we talked about revisiting expectations a lot because we may set expectations early in the marriage and then things shift because we have expectations around parenting.
15:10
We have expectations around sex.
We have expectations around in laws and work schedules and household labor and intimacy.
Not just sex, but intimacy, emotional connection, travel.
I mean, we have expectations around so many different things, but they change so frequently as we evolve that we might be holding unmet expectations because things have changed so much and haven't revisited them.
15:39
To look at what's more realistic here.
I mean, it takes a while to build a medical practice.
I may have had some unrealistic expectations, right?
15:49
Speaker 1
You know, and again, I think this is a plug for our four cornerstones.
We need to know who we are.
We need to sit with ourselves and find out what is important to me truly, what can I do without?
Who do I want to become?
Who am I now?
16:04
And then kind of adjust to these expectations or plans, if you will, accordingly.
So we don't hold our spouse to expectations that are really not practical.
Yeah.
16:20
And that it's just easy.
So easy.
Start resenting your spouse for this thing that's so well.
16:25
Speaker 2
Said We've talked a lot about what resentment is and how we fall into that trap.
Yeah.
I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah.
Why?
You and I may have resented each other at different times of life.
16:41
On the outside, things look pretty great, right?
We're this cute little family.
But there are some underlying issues that resurface.
Whether we're talking about it or not, they're in our heads.
16:53
Speaker 1
And hopefully this makes sense to you as you're listening and watching things that maybe you haven't thought of before that we're bringing out today.
Let us know in the comments.
Yeah.
What pain points are bringing up in your mind as we talk about this?
17:10
Speaker 2
Exactly.
So one of the things I loved best about this article by Doctor Ferrarello was not just that we're frustrated when we're unheard or undervalued or unsupported, but resentment actually a lot of times comes from an underlying feeling of I know who I want to be.
17:35
I know who I am right now and there's a huge gap between the two.
Or I know what I want my marriage to be, and I know what my marriage is right now, and there's a huge.
17:44
Speaker 1
Gap between the two.
17:46
Speaker 2
And so it's human nature to look for what's causing the barrier.
There's some kind of a barrier that keeping me or keeping our relationship from being what I want it to be.
And I have to find out who that barrier is or what that.
18:05
Speaker 1
Barrier is I know who that barrier is.
18:07
Speaker 2
It's our spouse.
18:07
Speaker 1
It's you.
I am the good guy.
18:12
Speaker 2
And I'm the good.
18:15
Speaker 1
One, I am practically perfect in every way, Mary.
18:18
Speaker 2
Puppets.
When you play that game and people say what superpower would you like?
18:24
Speaker 1
Mary puppets.
Mary Poppins, of course.
18:26
Speaker 2
That would be practically perfect in every way.
It is human nature, though, to look for what is standing in our way.
And in all the years that we've been married, 30 years, I've never thought about that idea.
So when we were in Med school, I quit my job working for a university to go with you to Med school.
18:47
And then we decided that I would have little home jobs, but that I would stay at home to raise the children.
I chose that.
I talk about that a lot on here.
18:55
Speaker 1
You were intentional about that.
18:57
Speaker 2
Yeah, but I taught piano lessons and different things to help bring in some income, and we lived on student loans like a lot of our friends did.
We go to residency, we start making money.
We thought $30,000 a year.
We're so rich.
This is great.
19:11
Speaker 1
Of course, that was a while.
19:13
Speaker 2
Ago you're making $10.00 an hour I think, or less probably.
19:16
Speaker 1
We we're like, oh, we're the money now.
19:18
Speaker 2
So then we level up a little bit.
You're hired as a doctor.
We're making more money, but it complicates life more.
I have the children to take care of.
I don't know who I am.
All of the past me.
19:33
Speaker 1
You knew who you were in the.
19:36
Speaker 2
Past.
19:36
Speaker 1
Yes, you had that identity firmly established, but now with the transition of real life doctor for me, and that's when you really started to like you didn't know who you.
19:48
Speaker 2
Were so I knew I was a wife and I knew I was a mother and roles are super, super important, but roles are not our identity in and of themselves I'd lost huge touch with.
What my preferences are, what I what kind of music, what kind of, but so many parts of who I am, I couldn't grasp onto.
20:11
I just knew.
I'm not learning like I love to learn.
I'm not progressing in life like I like to progress.
Everything was put into everybody.
20:21
Speaker 1
Else yeah, that's a perfect setup for resentment because you don't even know who you want to be, right?
So everything makes you upset.
20:30
Speaker 2
If you're not here to help me out, I'm going.
20:33
Speaker 1
To help you figure out who you want to come.
20:35
Speaker 2
My dream life is not doing laundry and making three meals a day and being the taxi driver and doing the finances for your office.
And the more we get in our heads about the life that we're living, that is not the life that's even a little bit fulfilling.
20:54
I think if we would have found more balance at that time of life, it would have been helpful.
But then to add to our situation, back then we were living 7-8 hours from my parents and several hours from yours.
I'd left all my friends from Med school and residency behind, moved to this rural town where everyone had their families there with them.
21:17
Speaker 1
Yes, a small town where I could thrive as a doctor.
21:21
Speaker 2
And.
21:21
Speaker 1
We we moved there because of me.
21:23
Speaker 2
It took me a couple of years to find good friends and so really too, I was very, very lonely.
Yeah, I didn't know who I was.
My expectations weren't being met and it was just really, really hard.
21:36
Speaker 1
Again, you had a hard time even defining expectations because you didn't even know who you were really.
21:41
Speaker 2
So that in and of itself is the biggest problem.
21:45
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, I mean, and This is why, again, we, we hound this so much, folks.
It's why it's a cornerstone, for crying out loud.
Who am I?
Who do I want to become?
Who am I becoming?
What do I stand for?
22:00
Speaker 2
The more we can answer that question, the more we can start using our agency.
So at that point in life, I didn't know who I was and it was really hard for me to verbalize.
Scott, one night a week, could you come home early and let me go take a class at the Community College or let me do this with some friends or whatever it was, try to find some connection in different places.
22:26
Couldn't verbalize it.
A German philosopher named Max Schuler, when he talks about resentment, says that resentment is a sign that we need to grow up, that we're not taking control of our lives, we are not actively pursuing the things that bring us joy and fulfilment, and we're using somebody else for the excuse instead of taking responsibility for it ourselves.
22:54
Speaker 1
Kind of like a scapegoat.
22:56
Speaker 2
Exactly like a scapegoat.
I'm taking all of my problems and transferring them, externalizing it because then I don't have to take responsibility.
23:07
Speaker 1
Well, it seems to me like that might be a comfortable way of doing it, right?
Yeah.
I don't want to put in the emotional work to make these changes myself.
23:21
Speaker 2
Or I don't know how to put in the emotional work.
23:25
Speaker 1
OK, that's great too.
That's a good point.
I don't know how.
Either way, it doesn't get done this emotional work that needs to happen, and it's very convenient and very comfortable to have a scapegoat.
And since I'm married to you, why not have you as my scapegoat?
23:45
Speaker 2
So what happens if I make you my scapegoat and you make me your scapegoat?
23:51
Speaker 1
Well, that's a problem now, isn't it, my love?
23:53
Speaker 2
That's the quickstand that we are stuck and we cannot get out.
23:57
Speaker 1
You can't get out.
You know, one thing that I just recently started thinking about, this dilemma, this quagmire, is that there are things that you do as a wife, as a mother, as whoever you are, that I will never.
24:13
Speaker 2
Fully.
24:14
Speaker 1
Know or appreciate, and there are things that I do as a physician.
I know this, 'cause I think that you will never see, you'll never know, you will never fully appreciate.
It's that gap, like my wife doesn't know how hard I work.
24:30
My wife doesn't know how much I put into this.
That may be true.
24:34
Speaker 2
And my husband, when I was a young mother, has no idea how hard it is to be 100% serving other people and not being.
24:47
Speaker 1
Well, taking care of particularly one child who was a hellion.
And you're right, I didn't know that because I was at work.
Right.
And so I think, like, we started this episode.
Do you feel unheard?
And I think what we're saying is, yeah, we both feel unheard from each other.
25:04
Speaker 2
And this takes us to last week's episode with Rafi Bullock where he talked about the three most important words that we can say when we are having some of those struggles with feeling unheard.
Help me understand.
25:20
Speaker 1
Yes, I like that.
25:22
Speaker 2
Help me understand.
One of the best ways to stop and interrupt resentment is to listen with empathy and compassion to each other, to whatever the wound is that they're carrying, whatever the heavy thing is that they're carrying over a long period of time, and say, help me understand.
25:42
Speaker 1
Like that, it's hard, though it's not easy.
It's me taking responsibility for my emotional baggage, right?
I can't have a scapegoat anymore, and that's hard.
25:53
Speaker 2
So how about if we talk a little bit about what are some of the things that eventually helped us, helped me specifically take action and you, because you had some resentment too, did you take action on some of the things you were resentful about?
26:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, let's talk about that.
But let's let's start with you.
26:12
Speaker 2
So I think one of the first things was some hospitalists came into town.
26:18
Speaker 1
So a hospitalist is somebody who only works in the hospital.
26:22
Speaker 2
They do the rounds on your patients in the morning.
They do the rounds on your patients in the evening.
26:27
Speaker 1
So I could offload all of my patients in the hospital to someone else.
26:32
Speaker 2
You weren't really excited about the idea at first because you were afraid that would make you less.
26:39
Speaker 1
Less competent.
Look, I got the rush of feeling like I'm learning a lot.
I'm becoming a really good physician.
So yeah, there's some loss there, but the loss of that was not as great as the.
26:52
Speaker 2
Loss.
26:53
Speaker 1
From some of the very significant needs that you had in our children had.
26:59
Speaker 2
Right.
The second thing I was able to identify was we went to a thing where a professor was teaching about the importance of counseling together as a couple, and we started doing it every week.
27:14
Speaker 1
So we became intentional, our second cornerstone.
27:17
Speaker 2
And that opened up the possibility for me to start putting into words what some of my ideas were, what some of my frustrations were.
I don't know that I verbalized that I felt resentment so much, but it also gave me more shared power with you.
27:34
Speaker 1
So is it safe to say that with these couples councils, because it's intentional, it's more formal, it gave you that space to now come up with the language to tell me who you are and what you want to do.
27:50
Does that sound right?
27:51
Speaker 2
Exactly.
And we made decisions together.
We didn't have just you making the decisions because you're the breadwinner or the head of the household.
We made those decisions together.
So I started to feel like I was heard more, I was seen more, I was understood.
28:09
The third thing that I think really made a difference.
So after we've been in Arizona 10 years, we moved to Texas and things were really, really hard here for quite a while.
But like we talk about in our 30 year anniversary episode, we kept turning to each other.
28:25
We give a little more detail of that there.
28:28
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's episode 132.
MM.
Hmm.
Yep.
28:32
Speaker 2
You took a class on starting and building your own business, and somebody mentions using QuickBooks Online could shorten what I was spending many hours a week doing on the finances to maybe 5 hours a week because it was all automated.
And for me, that was the best news.
28:49
And so I came to you and said I want to go back to Graduate School.
And that really gave me the opportunity to dive into something that was of great interest to me.
So I think with those graduated steps of learning who I was, again, it helped me drop the resentment.
29:12
I took action.
You took action.
We took action.
29:16
Speaker 1
Yeah.
So I took action by assessing the situation and cutting back in areas that I could, right.
And then we had the couple's council intentionality, right where you had that space to find that language of who you want to become and then just taking action.
29:34
Speaker 2
Right.
So I don't wait for you to remove the barrier on everything.
I mean, you did help when you did the hospitalist thing, but a lot of it took action on my own part, responsibility on my own part for becoming who I want to become.
29:49
Speaker 1
I think too, you talk about space to develop who you are.
This is a great time to plug our meditation episode too.
And a lot of people, I don't know why they just don't meditate.
I'm telling you, it's life changing.
30:06
It allows you to really come to yourself, find out who you are.
30:10
Speaker 2
I think to make that shift in becoming who we need to become and who we want to become takes a lot of courage.
The reason so many of us sit in resentment for so long is because it's pretty risky and change can be scary.
30:27
Speaker 1
Yes, indeed.
30:29
Speaker 2
And it was really, really scary to go back to Graduate School.
I knew it was who I wanted to be.
It was what I wanted to do.
I remember buying a bracelet that reminded me, be strong, be courageous.
30:45
And as I'd walk across campus, I would keep looking at that.
I just kept saying, I can do this.
I can do this.
The things that we want to become require courage, and they require taking out the barrier with our own agency, using our own self to find ourself.
31:02
Speaker 1
You know, that's a really great point, my love.
I think for me, with that resentment with you, I let it fester.
I let it build up underneath the surface until finally it just boiled out and we had a kind of a blow up, so to speak.
31:20
And as a result of that, I think we began to listen to each other more.
Like, these are my pain points.
They're not your pain points, but they're mine.
And yeah, you may not ever understand why I have these pain points, why certain things are so important to me and they're not to you and vice versa.
31:40
But I just remember you having that compassion toward me, you know, and coming to me with compassion and love and me feeling that from you, that desire that you really want to to be different.
31:56
Speaker 2
Yes, I did want to change.
I did want to remove parts of me that were causing pain for you, and at the same time you can't rely on that for me.
You also have to work towards taking action yourself.
32:11
Speaker 1
Absolutely right.
Yes, I think that we had an opportunity to talk with each other about the important things, what's important to us in our lives, and at least acknowledging that with each other so we can start helping each other achieve those important things.
32:32
And just to realize too, it changes over a lifetime.
We're not the same person now as we were even last year, really.
32:39
Speaker 2
So what I hear you saying with that is that resentment, as destructive as it can be to a marriage, actually is the symptom that there's some growth needed.
32:53
Speaker 1
Yeah.
32:53
Speaker 2
That there's some change needed, that we are on the precipice of something greater, of recreating our marriage, if you will.
33:05
Speaker 1
Taking it up.
33:05
Speaker 2
Of growing up shaking it up and growing up as individuals.
33:09
Speaker 1
So growing up putting on my big boy pants, Yeah, it's time to become emotionally mature in this relationship.
33:18
Speaker 2
It's time to step into my own agency and figure out who I am and what I'm going to do about the parts that are causing me pain.
You know, Scott, as we travel and we talk to a lot of people in a lot of different places and even around here, we've run into a lot of people that end up ending the marriage because the resentments just too deep.
33:43
Speaker 1
At the same time these people get into new relationships, there is a human need for connection, intimate connection with another person.
It's not going away.
We're not going to get rid of it.
The culture is changing, but the need for human connection and intimacy will stay the same until the end of time.
34:05
We might as well get used to that fact and work on these relationships instead of saying, oh, there's someone else for me out there that's more in tune with me.
No, there's never going to be that person.
34:19
Speaker 2
Grow up in this relationship.
This is the best one to grow up in.
In most cases.
We never say you should stay in an abusive relationship, but we do want to give you hope that things can change If you're aware what is at the base of the resentment.
34:36
Yes, the resentment is I'm unheard.
There's unfair division of Labor.
There's unfair emotional equality.
You hurt me.
You betrayed me.
All of that might be true, but underneath all of that, what is it that I'm not able to be because of these things going on?
34:53
And what am I going to do about it?
34:55
Speaker 1
Right.
And you may have had some poor modeling by parents.
You may have had a childhood that's was hard.
You may have some genetics that make it hard emotionally.
Bipolar depression.
35:08
Speaker 2
Trauma.
35:09
Speaker 1
These are all things PTSD, all things that a lot of us has to deal with.
And that also plays into this.
You know, my love, this all sounds great and good, but what happens when it happens again?
35:27
I think maybe a lot of people, including us, it's one point or another think, oh, I know this now, therefore in the future, I'm never going to have to deal with this again.
And we're here to say that's not true.
35:42
Speaker 2
We're hurt again and we become angry again and it's not resolved at the time of the wounding.
And so it festers and festers and it becomes resentment again and.
35:54
Speaker 1
Then you.
35:54
Speaker 2
Without us even recognizing.
35:55
Speaker 1
Yeah, You think, well, wait, I learned this before.
I've already learned this.
I should be over this.
We're here to say that is not the case.
What we are here to say is when it does happen again, you have more tools in your belts.
36:09
Speaker 2
When you have anger towards your spouse, address it quickly and not by nagging or not, by yelling or not by fighting right, by saying help me understand and then being empathetic, compassionate and working together to come up with solutions.
36:25
Speaker 1
So I know that there's a lot of people out there hurting in their relationships and their marriages.
The divorce rate is still quite high and there's a lot of people unhappy in their marriages because of this one thing, resentment, And it's time to pull up your big boy or big girl pants and really look at the resentment head on.
36:47
Talk to us, reach out, leave a comment.
Let us know what you think about this topic of resentment.
36:55
Speaker 2
If you're not getting our weekly tips e-mail from Marriage IQ, we encourage you to go to our website, marriageiq.com and subscribe to that.
Then you'll get an e-mail every Wednesday with a link to the episodes, and we give you an action tip for the week, something that you can work on with your spouse that's related specifically to that episode.
37:15
Speaker 1
This has been a great conversation today.
I think we're just scratching the surface.
I think we need to spend some more time.
37:21
Speaker 2
Might do some more episodes on this.
37:23
Speaker 1
Episodes on resentment, but we really enjoy having you here today.
We love all of you and hope you feel that from us, the Hastings, your friends that here at Marriage IQ.
And until next time, we'll see you on another exciting episode.
37:39
Speaker 2
Marriage IQ.
