Don’t Let Resentment Sink Your Marriage

02/14/18 • 20 min

Resentment is what happens when you are treated unfairly and you begin to feel angry and bitter. Resentment can be directed at your spouse, at God, at your life: but if it begins to play a significant role in your marriage, that’s going to make home a pretty tough place to be. Proverbs 12:25 says that anxiety makes the heart heavy and as I thought about the subject of resentment it occurred to me that resentment can be a form of anxiety. You don’t see this in any diagnostic manual, but it has the same ruminating characteristic of repeatedly mulling over past grievances, with a lot of negativity. We all end up with resentment at different places and times in our marriage. We don’t want to be getting after you about it, but rather we want to help you understand how it happens, why it doesn’t help and what to do differently! Resentment often strikes us when we feel that we have been treated badly. Especially if it’s in a way we did not deserve, but it can even happen when good things happen to others which you feel they did not earn[i]. That starts to look a lot like envy. In marriage it often occurs when you feel you have been unfairly wronged and so it might bring about a desire to get even by holding onto a grudge and remaining bitter[ii]. Major Sources of Resentment in Marriage Unresolved Conflict If you struggle with poor conflict resolution and a fairly frequent inability to solve disagreements this often leads to a buildup of resentment and anger[iii]. You get this buildup of annoyances and hurts which might be individually small but if left unforgiven and unaddressed can start to look pretty big. This slowly building resentment then negatively impacts marital satisfaction for both partners. It is also helpful to note that certain styles of conflict are specifically linked to creating high levels of resentment, especially the competitive style of conflict where each spouse is trying to "win" the argument rather than reach a joint solution[iv]. Unless arguments are properly resolved and forgiven, resentment at the initial transgression which caused the argument will continue to impact the marriage. I often tell the couples I am providing counseling to that how much you argue is not nearly as important as if you resolve those arguments. Underlying resentment about past grievances can then fuel future conflict and impede conflict resolution in the future, creating a negative spiral[v]. If you’re still angry about something from last week then this week’s annoyance is going to seem even more infuriating. And then when you’re arguing you start to throw in all the little things from the last few days that have annoyed you, and the whole thing blows up. Don’t worry, we’re going to show you what to do about all this in just a moment! Perceived Unfairness Believing that your spouse is acting unfairly often leads to feelings of resentment which can create conflict and reduce marital satisfaction. This can occur over all kinds of aspects of life, such as: Division of household labor: believing that you do more work than your spouse or that the work is split unfairly leads to resentment, especially for wives[vi]. Emotion work: similarly, feeling that you are doing all the emotional work to maintain the relationship (you’re the one doing all the maintenance behaviors like expressing love, confiding and intimacy etc) or feeling like you put more work into the emotional side of the marriage than your spouse does can also create resentment[vii]. Secrecy: feeling that information is being kept from you by your spouse can also lead to resentment[viii]. Lack of perceived support: feeling unsupported and thinking that your spouse is not helping you through difficulties also leads to hurt and resentment. For example a study in 2000[ix] examined marital satisfaction in couples where one spouse had a serious illness and found that a lack of support and concern or a refusal to help led to fe...

Previous Episode

How Marriage Counselling Works

Today we want to lift the hood on the world of marriage counseling and look at one particular approach and how it works. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens in the counseling room or are considering counseling there’s a lot more to it than you might think! The Mystery of Marriage Counseling The world of counseling may seem like a mysterious or even intimidating place to those who know little about it. There’s a stigma around mental health itself, and although a distressed marriage is not a mental health problem, we rarely talk about our struggles as a couple. We like to appear like we have it all together and I think us church-going folk are even more prone to this. But then you do hear the horror stories when things don’t go well and people open up. Some terrible advice comes from people who call themselves counselors. So then when it comes to choosing a marriage counselor it can be pretty scary because your marriage is a big deal and you don’t want to the wrong person trying to help you with it! Basic Marriage Counselor Criteria Now I want to say that this article is not an extended advertisement for our services, but the things I am going to tell you are important facts you need to know, whether you decide to work with someone from my counseling practice or find a local counselor. The first thing is that not all counseling degrees are created equal. When a person is earning their Master’s degree in order to become a therapist, their school and the degree program they choose will generally orient itself around a particular school of thought. Of course, there are a plethora of flavors. But when it comes to marriage counseling you should know that there are a number of universities around North America that offer marriage and family therapy programs specifically. These kinds of degrees have less focus on specific mental health problems like anxiety disorders or even addictions, and they focus very much on relationships, how humans interact, how children learn to love and relate to others, on marriage dynamics and on family systems. So when you choose a therapist the first thing you should filter on is their education: do they have a degree that specializes in marriage and family? And usually you’ll see this in the letters after their last name in that either their degree will look like MAMFT (Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy) or their certifying body will supply MFT credentials like LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist). If you’re not sure, ask about the person’s training. The second thing you want to look for is whether the therapist has a specific approach to marriage counseling that is evidence-based. “Evidence-based” means that they are using a treatment approach which has been tested and tried through research and peer-reviewed journals. Surprisingly, there are only a handful of marriage approaches that have been rigorously tested in this way, and so if you want to give you marriage the best chance of success you would do well to ensure you are selecting a counselor who uses an evidence based approach. Otherwise you’ll have no idea whether what you’re being told actually works or not. Probably the two most popular evidence-based counseling approaches are Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (sometimes called EFT or EFCT) and the Gottman Method. I have taken specific training in both of these, on top of my MFT degree, as has my colleague in my practice, Jesse Schellenberg. They are quite different but very complementary. Both of us favor EFCT as our preferred approach: about 90% of couples show significant improvements using this approach and we’ll talk more about success rates in a moment, but 90% is incredible. How EFCT Works Key Principles Now, I am going to work hard to break the scientific jargon and psychobabble into English here but there are some key principles in this approach to marriage counseling that are important (Gurman et al,

Next Episode

Defensiveness in Marriage

I do not think that there is a human being on the face of our planet right now who does not struggle at least a little bit with defensives. Some of us struggle a lot. And defensiveness in marriage is definitely going to make you unhappy and dissatisfied with your marriage. Turns out, it’s not an easy one to overcome either—but today we’re going to show you how. This week we are gonna call you out and expose this gremlin running around in all our marriages called Defensiveness. I know what you’re thinking...”I’m not defensive!!” But, that’s the problem right there. How Defensiveness Works The Bible says that "A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” (Proverbs 18:19 ESV) Or we could say a “Wife offended” or “Husband offended”... Once you hit that point where there’s an attack, there’s a known flaw, there’s known issues then it is really easy to become defensive. So we have some cool stuff to start with because we are really going to break down this defensiveness thing — you have to know the enemy in order to defeat it — and the enemy is not your spouse, the enemy is the defensiveness that happens between you. Defensiveness happens when four things line up[i]. What I really like about this is that if you take any of these out, you begin to undermine defensiveness in your own life. So the four things are: A self-perceived flaw which you refuses to admit Sensitivity to that flaw (e.g., you are embarrassed or even ashamed about it) An attack by another person (doesn’t have to be a huge attack — could just be a blunt observation) The attacker seeing the same flaw which the defender does not want to admit Defensiveness Could Be a Personality Trait The first two items above are more characteristic issues: they enter into that area of ways of thinking and/or personality traits. I have a flaw — I do not want to admit to it — and I am sensitive about it. That’s getting into that character realm of things. Often we might feel quite inadequate around a flaw or at least insecure about it. We certainly do not want to admit it to others and we may not even really admit it to ourselves. In order to become defensive, that real or perceived flaw has to relate to something that is an important part of my own sense of self or self-worth, and my identity[ii]. It’s like a closely guarded secret that you’re trying your hardest to hide from everyone— maybe even yourself— so when it’s brought to light you instantly try to shoot it down. So we get defensive in situations in which our identity is threatened. A classic example is an addiction — even take it on the lighter end of the scale, like a phone addiction. For me to be defensive, go through the four parts: I perceive it but do not want to admit to it I am sensitive — I do not want it pointed out You point it out to me with a harsh edge on your voice because it is a problem that is coming between us You see the flaw, and I know that. And then I am beginning to think, I am an addict. I am a bad husband. Good husbands do not have this problem. I stake a lot of my self-identity on being a good husband and father. Now we have all the ingredients for defensiveness. So how does this get talked (or fought!) through in a marriage? Defensive Communication in Marriage There are two sides to defensive communication: the defensive reaction, and the action which caused it. We need to separate these. Just think carefully about how you either trigger defensiveness in your spouse, or how you respond to your spouse when you are feeling defensive[iii]. Let’s start with the first. How to Trigger Defensiveness In Your Spouse Here are some sure-fire ways to put your spouse into a defensive mindset: Use words or tone of voice that evaluates or judges the listener (“I see you are on your phone...again”) Attempt to control or coerce the listener (“If you don’t ...