So many women that I talk to deal with this issue. They have feelings of resentment towards their spouse or partners or mother in laws or fill in the blank of who that might be for you. What is resentment? According to dictionary.com resentment is “bitter indignation of having been treated unfairly.” It is a feeling of anger. Many women that I talk to feel resentment towards their spouses because they consider the amount of work that they do around the home, or the time they spend with the kids or the affection they receive is somehow unjust.
Do you relate?
Maybe you feel like you are pulling all the work load while he “spends time off.”
Maybe you feel like you are pulling the emotional work with the kids.
Maybe you feel like your hubby is not opening up to you emotionally when you are pouring your heart out.
It seems like reasonable things to feel bad about right? And most of us are taught growing up that our feelings come from our circumstances, which includes other people and their behavior. But if you know about the work that I do then you will probably guess what I am going to say next.
Your husbands actions do not cause you to feel resentment, your thoughts do. Thankfully, you can always change your thoughts when you want to.
This is great news, because for you to think that he has to change for you to feel better is really disempowering.
I know what you must be thinking… “but you really you do know MY circumstance.” I promise you, that your situation is not an exception to the rule. On top of that, if you keep telling yourself that your circumstances are out of your control, then you will keep being stuck in the victim mentality and that resentment feeling.
We have what are called “manuals” for others in our lives, where we want others to follow our rules so that we can feel good. When they don’t end up doing XYZ, then we blame them for our own unhappiness. That means that we give all of our power away to someone else, so they can determine how to end up feeling about a situation.
Think about it in regards to your own life. Do you have a manual for your husband saying:
“He shouldn’t play golf so much.”
“He needs to help with the housework.”
“I shouldn’t be the only one to enforce consequences here.”
Whenever you think that something should be different than it is, you are fighting with reality. When you do that, we loose 100% of the time. Looking at a situation in a realistic way instead of resisting it, we can start to become curious and wonder why they are acting the way that they are. Maybe you can start questioning your thought and see why you are the best person to do the housework or enforce consequences.
You can own your choices, feel confident about them and get rid of the resentment.
Instead of thinking that you have to do everything in the house, you can start to shift the idea to thinking that you are choosing to do things around the house.
Question all of your thoughts.
When you start shifting your story and letting go of the control and victim mentality, it may even start to feel empowering. To every wife that thinks that her husband is not expressing his emotions, there is a wife that thinks that hers is too sensitive. To every wife that thinks that her husband is never home, there is a wife that thinks that her husband is home too much. It’s not your husband, but how you are choosing to think about him that is important.
When thinking about the manuals you have for others in your life, think about what if that person fulfilled everything in that manual, how would you feel?
You might say that you might feel:
– Appreciated
– Valued
– Important
– Connected
– Loved
– Happy
You might think that if your spouse changes that you will get to feel all of those things, but we have zero control of how other people act. The alternative is to take responsibility of your own behavior, drop the manuals let others be exactly who they are.
We somehow get this idea along the way that once we are married that we are somehow supposed to complete each other. That we are somehow supposed to be on the same page all the time about parenting and life. But being married really is not about two puzzle pieces fitting together to form a whole piece. It is about two people coming together and creating something bigger and better.
When you have two people on opposite ends waiting to meet each others needs, what results is two very needy people. Then we get into emotional childhood thinking that the other person has to meet our needs before we meet theirs. Sometimes wives try to fill the husbands needs and completely forget about their own, thinking that one day, her husband will fill her manual and meet her needs.
The result is two people constantly trying to manipulate one another so they can be happy.
If one person does end up changing because of the other persons nagging or complaining, it will not be the lasting change or the change that they want anyway. What they really want is for their spouse to WANT to change. When people do things out of obligation, it creates more resentment and disconnection.
What if you can be in emotional adulthood and take responsibility for your own needs and let your husband meet his needs and just enjoy each others company when both of you are together?
What’s the point of having a husband then if you don’t need anyone there to meet your needs, you might be wondering.
So you can love him and grow as a person with him. Husbands, like every circumstance in our life, will bring up things about you and your own thoughts. That is the work to do while being in the midst of a person whom you can share your life with and love along the way. When you feel loving, it benefits you. You not loving him, only hurts you. He feels his emotions, and you feel yours. He does not feel your resentment, you do.
What if your husbands only job was to show up as he is and let you love him? How would your relationship be different if you stopped trying to have him fill in your manual and he did things he genuinely wants to do?
I do want to make a side note here and say that I am not advising you to tolerate any form of abuse or that you should not set boundaries in your relationship. But you can always choose to feel love and take responsibility for your own emotional life. That will always feel better than resentment or hate.
If you need help getting out of resentment and back into love, grab your FREE training on 5 ways to turn your marriage around. I’ll show you the blind spots so you can start thriving.
What’s next? Watch the Youtube video on the 3 beliefs you need to change your marriage.
Humbling words Krystina!
The perspective here is what I needed to hear.
I’m blown away in these paragraphs.
I’m glad you liked it!