Resentment

Resentment

I want to specifically speak about how resentment in relationships is not only tortuous towards your marriage but to yourself.

It is very common to have couples coming to see me after years of built-up resentment. Can you mend a relationship after years of resentment?

The answer is YES, but it will be that much more effortful. The better way to approach your grievances is as they occur, or as the Gottmans suggest, to have a ‘state of the union address’ once a week to air out the dirty laundry.

But just as we tend to self-flagellate ourselves unconsciously, we often do the same with our partners. It becomes a daily pattern of looking at their faults, rather than their assets.

When one constantly looks at all the reasons why their life sucks, your life sucks.

What we focus our attention on becomes our reality.

The sad thing about resentment and lack of forgiveness, as the quote states so well below, is that we are only harming ourselves, no other person. We must realize that our thoughts, energy, feelings, and emotions are staying at this low frequency. You can’t just shut that off, it is how you show up in every situation you walk into. It is YOU.

This is how YOU walk into the kitchen and approach your children. This is YOU driving to your gym class and cursing at the other drivers on the road. This is YOU spilling coffee on yourself and cursing at the barista for making the coffee too hot, or placing the lid on poorly.

YOU are pure misery and therefore all of your life is misery.

YOU have the choice to live your life differently, to decide you are not going to allow these feelings to be a part of you anymore, and do life differently.

Resentment is drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Resentment is doing, thinking, and being the same person every single day and expecting your world to change around you.

Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Hmmm…I think a very smart man noted that once upon a time. Perhaps it is time to pay attention to what Malachy and Albert had to say.

Emotional Affair

Emotional Affair

Many of us would love to call ourselves trustworthy, but are we? And do we trust our partners? Do we even trust ourselves?

What if we find ourselves one day discovering that we have stepped into the chasm of betrayal by our partner. Now what? Would it be a deal breaker for you? Was it a deal breaker for you?

In my experience as a coach, I have seen couples’ relationships dissipate quickly – because betrayal was a deal breaker for them. However, 90% of my couples remained together.

There is no proven coaching formula to follow because, to be honest, it really depends on the individual/couple. For some, it gave them permission to end an already terrible relationship, but for many others, it is devastating because it shattered their reality.

The big question asked is always “Why? How could you do this?”. And the common answer is “ I don’t know”. I hear this answer constantly, which just injects more frustration into the situation.

Being trained in the Gottman Method of Couple Counselling has definitely helped me in my coaching practice, as the couple is taken through a series of steps to repair and regain trust. However, to me, it simply reiterates the need for each person in any given relationship to own their worth and identify as an individual, not solely as a couple.

Your happiness does not rely on your partner. You must always remember this no matter what stage of your relationship.

Because of this, I feel the more mature the relationship, the stronger the staying power to work on the relationship. In the newer relationships (~8 years or less) the quicker the relationship ends. I understand the newer couples have ‘less skin in the game’, meaning they may or may not have children at this point, or the time to prove their love for one another.

I have coached many couples through these hard times and the ability to trust once again is extremely difficult, despite truly wanting the relationship to work and deeply loving their partner. As mentioned above, for some it is a deal breaker. They know themselves well enough to realize they will never be able to trust this person again. This is where the real work lies; reconnecting with yourself and engaging on a personal journey of emotional growth and evolution.

I particularly remember one couple I worked with; the woman had ‘trust issues’ prior to stepping into her current marriage. Because she hadn’t done the deep emotional work on herself to trust another person again, she found herself in a second marriage with a husband who had an emotional affair. Rather than me ‘fixing her husband”, I worked with her. I helped her build herself up to choose to make the right choice, mainly by ridding the old paradigms of what she once believed of herself, which is always done in pillar 1. I helped her to reconnect with herself on many different levels in a way that she eventually started to honour herself once again and discover her own values. When her husband began to see her strength, he was more connected and committed to her.

I hope that none of you ever had their hearts broken because of betrayal. However, if you have please let me know if I can help.