Practical Steps for Healing Resentment in Marriage

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Resentment in marriage can eat away the relationship from the inside like termites eating the timber support beams of a home, robbing them of their strength and making them vulnerable to break. Resentment can displace the love in your marriage with feelings of anger and hurt.

Finding the cure for resentment requires couples to address key relationship issues through which feelings of bitterness entered their relationship. And dealing with these properly will allow any built-up resentment to function as a gift as it guides you to deal with weaknesses and to rebuild a stronger marriage relationship.

Understanding resentment in marriage

At its heart resentment in marriage is the accumulation of negative emotions which you feel toward your partner as a result of perceived wrongs, being taken for granted, betrayals, poor treatment, and neglect. This toxicity builds up and erodes the elements of trust, kindness, and assumed goodwill that is required for any marriage to work.

If your wife or husband has acted in a manner that broke the agreements of your relationship – whether they knew it or not – it hurts. And this unmet expectation of not being treated correctly, having a marriage that does not function as you want it to, or giving your all to the relationship and feeling that your spouse is not doing the same brings disappointment, frustration, and anger.

Actions that cause resentment in marriage

These activities come to pass in all shapes and sizes, including several common causes. See the list below for any that may ring true in your marriage:

• A frustratingly unfulfilling sex life.
• Arguments that are left hanging and not resolved.
• When you try harder than your partner to make the relationship work.
• A lack of intimacy and connection for an ongoing period.
• Behavior from your spouse that seeks to control or manipulate you.
• Snide remarks or sarcasm from your partner.
• Feeling like you are not a priority to your spouse.
• When words and actions intended to hurt are far more common than apologies or attempts to change.

It will come as no surprise that resentments start as small as a seed. But like a seed, the hurt of your spouse’s carelessness, forgotten commitments, or neglect to fill your love tank grows.

These hurts need to be dealt with as soon as possible so that they are resolved well. If not, one small hurt builds upon another disappointment until a person’s heart is full of historical wrongs. These signs become a part of how you relate to someone you once treasured.

Watch out for these signs

• Always feeling tense about the relationship and having to watch what you say.
• Finding it hard to trust your spouse.
• Continually ruminating on past wrongs.
• Not being able to assume the best of your partner, rather you think the worst of them.
• Constant bickering and arguments, finding fault with one another.
• Almost no signs of affection between you.
• An underlying feeling of defensiveness and choosing not to relate emotionally.
• Making up scenarios where you leave the relationship.

With these warning signs in plain sight, it is logical to ask whether resentment leads inevitably toward an ultimate breakdown in the relationship and divorce.

It is plain that no relationship can survive being constantly undermined day, upon week, upon month, upon year. If resentment in marriage is not successfully resolved it can and does eat away at the marriage to the point where divorce seems like the only option.

Resentment is so hard to deal with as it attacks that base layer upon which every relationship is founded, love and respect. Not being able to deal with problems constructively can make a marriage feel like a dead-end and may repel both you and your spouse away from one another.

The good news is that there are steps to healing resentment in marriage.

Shared responsibility toward healing

Tackling the rot at the root is difficult and painful, however, it can work if both husband and wife share the responsibility, are willing to have transparent communication, and are both equally committed to ensuring their relationship is healed.

The couple must understand the hurts in the relationship, be in a position to discuss them frankly and honestly, and then follow through with the commitment to meet the needs of the other.

Marriage counselors often use the metaphor of a glass window between each person in the marriage. A clear and clean window allows the connection between you to flow easily. When you first met nothing was smudging the window between you.

However, as time passed, the first small hurt caused a slight dark mark on the surface of the window. As with any window, one or two marks are easily looked past. But compound these and leave them unresolved, and the marks stack up. Soon you battle to connect easily with your spouse and the glass is dirty with hurt and unforgiveness that seems impossible to resolve.

As you both overcome the hurdles that resentment places in your marriage, you and your spouse clean this window relationship and allow you to realize you are very close, and can see and understand each other clearly. This process brings you back together and sets you to build a far more fulfilling marriage than before.

Practical steps to heal resentment in marriage

The following steps may feel impossible if you or your spouse are beset by resentment. As you both process the hurts you feel and properly see the unmet needs beneath them, you will need to communicate these needs in a way that ensures they are met.

It is worth pursuing to get this right. If you or your spouse feels cynical and without hope for the relationship, understand that this is a common byproduct of resentment. It creates a story about your relationship that may well not be accurate and tinged by your perceptions.

With that in mind, here are actions to work through:

1. While keeping an open mind, make a list of absolutely everything awesome about your partner and the relationship you both share. Start by writing down five points. And build on this list until you have filled every line of a piece of paper.

2. Now, consider the following before listing every single negative thing that has caused you to feel resentful:

• What has your spouse done that you can remember, despite trying to forget?
• What are some of your partner’s characteristics that you complain about?
• In which areas do you feel unloved, neglected, or disrespected?

3. Choose one resentment that you want to work on healing first, and ask:

• What really hurts you here?
• Why is this important to you?
• What are your assumptions about your spouse in this situation?
• What do you want them to acknowledge, change or act upon?

4. Having done this homework for yourself it is time to discuss your findings with your partner. Remember that if criticism is at the start of a conversation, an argument is at the end of it. When you are busy with this step remember just to pick one focus at a time, be mindful of not making assumptions, and do not resort to personal attacks.

5. Watch out for your spouse’s triggers. They may react through defensiveness and turn away due to insecurities and unresolved emotional injuries.

6. Be curious about their point of view by referring to the interpretations and assumptions that you have made. Make use of questions to ask what might be going on.

7. Get an action plan together and describe the actions you need to answer your needs and resolve the situation.

8. Be sure you celebrate your progress. As you work through each step of resentment, do things that reward you and your spouse that you can appreciate and reinforce your progress by reminding yourselves of the progress made.

9. Never forget to appreciate what you and your spouse are doing every step of the way.

Christian counseling for marriage issues

If you are looking for additional help to teach how you manage the resentment that has built up in your marriage, browse our online counselor directory or contact our office to find out how we can help you. We would be honored to walk with you on this journey.