Dealing With Feelings Before You Grow Resentful
Resentment doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it grows slowly over time. Resentment becomes a serious barrier to a happy, loving marriage. It is important to deal with difficult feelings as they arise so that resentment does not build.
When people experience unpleasant feelings, there are a variety of ways to deal with them. One method is to repress these feelings. Repressed feelings do not get expressed. Instead, people push them aside and just don’t deal with them. Over time, these repressed feelings can slowly build, causing resentment.
Hurt feelings, sadness, anger, embarrassment, and grief are examples of feelings that many people try to repress. When these sorts of hurts are not dealt with they don’t go away. Instead, they build up.
Feeling repeatedly hurt, put down, and saddened by your partner’s behaviors is unhealthy. If you don’t talk to your partner and try to make positive changes, these feelings can cause you a lot of stress. They can even cause you to become physically ill.
Once a person’s repressed feelings build, resentment and anger grows. It is impossible to feel loving feelings toward a person when you feel resentful toward them. Instead, all of those hurts have built to the point that it starts to shut off your positive feelings toward your partner.
Resentment also makes it difficult to effectively resolve conflict and solve problems together. Instead, you’ll likely feel irritated with your partner’s behaviors and attitude much of the time. It can be hard to work with someone when you feel resentment toward them.
The best way to manage resentment is to prevent it. Deal with your feelings as they arise and talk to your partner. Learn positive ways to express your emotions and engage your partner in healthy problem solving.
If you already feel resentment toward your partner, don’t ignore it. Start dealing with it. Be honest in determining the reason you are resentful. Try to work it out with your partner by talking about your feelings and the reasons that caused you to become resentful. It may require professional counseling to help you deal with this either individually or in marriage counseling.
