I’m not at all nervous to be told by my clients that they feel resentment towards their partner. This is a normal human experience. Taking dentistry as a metaphor, one can be fastidious about oral hygiene, but still require an annual professional clean to rid one’s pearlies of stubborn plaque. Similarly, one would need to be near perfect, and in a relationship with a near-perfect partner, to harbour no blame or animosity at all for choices and consequences, over time.

Resentment can feel quite all-consuming, when active. Ill-feeling, blame and contempt wax and wane in long-term relationships. The dice of life rolls, we stake our bets, and situations and circumstances in our control and beyond our control ‘happen’. Most of us don’t set out to hurt or harm anyone, but our own frail humanity betrays us, and despite the best of good intentions, we mess up.

Or we are just under-resourced to cope, and our efforts end up lacking.

My husband didn’t attend my father’s funeral, for example.

Not because he’s an asshole. Quite the contrary, though this may well have been the judgement bestowed upon him, at the time.

We realise, in retrospect, that he almost literally could not.

My dad died in a shocking and traumatic way, and it was too much for any of us to bear.

But my husband shut down. When he is profoundly overwhelmed, he avoids for the A-Team.

I did give him an ‘out’, in the moment, and I also later needed to own that permission.

“It’s ok if you can’t be there”.

He lapped it up with reckless abandon.

In the moment, I had bigger fish to fry, and supported his stance.

But BOY! Did he pay for it after the fact!

I found myself seething and resentful in subsequent weeks and months. When I ‘let him off the hook’, I was in shock. I didn’t know that I’d be lugging 2 toddlers, a car seat, and a mass of traumatised grief into Ubers, through airports, onto planes. And that the only other human who had actually experienced that day with me (except for one other) would not be at my side.

For some time, I rained lightening and hail down on him, at every opportunity I got.

And then one day, he said, “I fucking hear you… I cannot even believe I wasn’t there… I hate myself every day for that choice. I don’t even know what I was thinking. If I had a repeat, I’d be there”.

The clouds parted.

The sun came out.

Blue skies, shimmering dew, and all was well.

I had been heard.

Validated.

Acknowledged.

And I could let it go.

I have never brought it up again. Nor wanted to.

This is something of a parable of how I work with resentment in my practice, with my couples. The problem is not the resentment. The problem is not the resultant contempt, and corresponding overt or passive aggression.

The problem is the inability to communicate about how we have hurt each other.

Someone’s pain, at our hands, makes us ‘feel a certain way’, as the millennials say. It’s natural, under attack, to instinctively protect and defend our stance. Even if we’re at fault. So we rail back, lash out, throw stones. And significantly compound the situation.

There is nothing more disarming to an (angry) person, in pain, than to be heard and validated.

I insist on this, with my couples. My mantra, in my practice, is that if someone is shrill-and-shrieky, or escalating, or repeating, repeating, REPEATING their position, it’s simply because they have not yet felt heard. When that healing balm of being heard lands, it’s like sand on a fire.

Therefore relationship therapy, around contempt and resentment, is always with a focus on connection. Not on right-wrong-good-bad, but on hearing and validating the other person’s perspective. Even if we don’t agree. This is fundamental and many misunderstand me: validating another person’s experience does not mean you necessarily agree with them.

Of course it helps enormously when you do!

When in the throes of a powerful disagreement, I ask my clients to listen to their angry, hurt partner, “like a shrink would’. Not as the accused. Not as the object of this person’s ire. But as a shrink. And what I mean by that is with a respectful view to stepping into that person’s world, and understanding how their perspective makes sense to them, according to their psychology, background, triggers and thoughts.

[Disclaimer: I know you’re not a shrink. I know it’s not always that simple. I also don’t think one should be their partner’s counsellor and spiritual guide. So please don’t hear what I’m not saying].

I’m just asking for an attitude that says, “This human I’m in a relationship with is not psychotic. And so their behaviour has to make sense for them, and I want to understand that, so that together we can untangle this web or hurt and pain”.

I wholly acknowledge that it takes  emotional maturity for the person being accused of something to sit in their partner's pain and validate their feelings without needing to be defensive about it.

Which is why I subscribe to the view that relationships are hard work, and exist to grow us.

And then of course there’s the common scenario of a partner fundamentally disagreeing. Say, for example, my husband maintained to the death that he had no business attending my father’s funeral, and remained defensive about this. There are most certainly instances like this, and I see them every time.

The plot thickens here, and the offended, affronted party then has some work to do on how much that hurt means to them. Whether then can in fact let it go. Whether it is sufficient for them to know they were wronged, even if the other disagrees. And then to honour that hurt without the balm of their partner’s validation. And if there can then be an ‘agree to disagree, but agree to exhale’ experience. This sometimes requires individual therapy, intensive journaling, mindfulness, and recalibration of a relationship. It’s far harder, and needs more attention on this platform.

One of the traditions that I appreciate in psychology argues that therapy is effective for the mere experience of respect, unconditional positive regard, warmth and empathy. That these factors are therapeutic and healing in and of themselves. And I’ve found that this is true in relationships and friendships too. These elements cover a multitude of sins. On our journeys to great connections, and meaningful lives, we’d do well to foster more of these attitudes, and challenge of instinct to defend and protect.

CONNECTION for the win. Not being right. But being understanding, and understood.

Sidenote:

If you have felt this article to be particularly useful, and you are quite moved, there may be value in having a look at my RELATIONSHIP REHAB: From Conflict to Connection online program. It’s fantastic for couples who’d like to do some work on their own, without seeing a therapist. Here’s the link.