How to Address Resentment in Marriage
Your spouse is the person with whom you’ve chosen to spend the rest of your life. He or she can sometimes become the person who causes you the deepest pain, which can lead to resentment in marriage. C.S. Lewis once wrote, "To love at all is to be vulnerable." You can’t truly love someone without being open to them, sharing yourself with them, and possibly being hurt by them. This is the risk we all take in forming relationships with other people, and while it’s a risk worth taking to experience love, it can be an expensive risk. How resentment in marriage happens Of course, your spouse isn’t supposed to hurt you, but all too often that’s precisely what happens. When a loved one hurts you, what often compounds that hurt is the sense of betrayal – surely they, of all people, ought to know that this would hurt. A stranger can hurt you, but you don’t expect them to look out for you; you do expect those who love you to show some consideration. When you’re hurt, the anger and ill feeling that flows from that can cause resentment. Resentment is a complex emotion that combines anger, disgust, fear, and disappointment. It can set in if a person repeatedly doesn’t respect your boundaries, take advantage of you, or they show preferential treatment to someone else, or they disappoint your expectations. This can happen in marriage if one spouse doesn’t do their chores routinely and expects their spouse to pick up the slack. It happens if the words “Thank you” are absent in a marriage, and one feels taken for granted. Resentment can develop if one spouse makes fun of the other in the company, or if one spouse has an affair or withholds affection. When these and other [...]