How To Stop Resenting Your Husband

A ten-step field guide

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Image: My husband Andrew and me

Step 1: Invite, request, insist, demand he does his healing work, his inner work, his relational work until he does it. Like truly does it. Doesn’t just say he’s done it already now get off my back woman, but actually leans all the way in. And continues to do it. In partnership. With devotion and unwavering respect. None of the other steps will work without this. It will just be more fawning or asking or heavy lifting that breeds more resentment. Don’t fool yourself that this step is all it’ll take. The change we seek requires us to change too. Annoying, I know, I don’t make the rules.  

Step 2: Know what resentment feels like in your body. Track it. Become intimate with it. Watch it surface with all the disrepair and hurt, the circular stories that roll around again and again. Notice the way it makes you bitter and brittle. The way you knew it was going to go like this because it always goes like this. Ask, do I want to be a bitter and brittle woman? Is it worth being right about how things are if the consequences are a mouth full of bile and a dried-up heart flaking away? Am I open to it changing, to being surprised and delighted?

Step 3: Notice the armour and armies you build to be infallible. The ways you collect evidence of being victimized by his behaviour and insensitivities. Track the ways you infantilize him, the memes you laugh at, the stereotypes you perpetuate, the agreement you seek from the women around you about how men are, what you can expect of them, all the work you do, all the work they don’t, the superiority you cling to because of all the healing you’ve done and the therapy you’ve had and the wisdom you hold. 

Step 4: Be brutally, tenderly, compassionately honest about the ways you withhold to protect yourself. The ways your resentment seeps out and hardens the room and sucks out the safety for both of you. The subtle manipulations you use to get what you want because it’s too scary or exhausting or vulnerable to blamelessly share how you feel and what you need and risk not getting it. Meet your own tender heart with the kindness of an awake parent, of course it’s hard to open, of course, of course. Know your wounds of abandonment and the terror that you won’t be met and the way you project that outward.  

Step 5: Share how you feel, what you need, what you’re available for and not. Set boundaries sourced from intimate self-regard and mutual respect. Do not tolerate abuse or neglect. Do not pretend something is abuse or neglect that isn’t because you didn’t get what you want. Know the difference between being available to have your needs met and attempting to control behaviour or outcome. Excavate the fears you have around truly and intimately being seen, the subtle ways you avoid revealing your deepest desires, fears and foibles. 

Step 6: Let yourself be fascinated by your story, by your lived experience, but hold its truth loosely, let it rewrite itself as you change, together. Understand, not as an intellectual exercise, but in your bones, that your version of events and his version of events are not just different because he’s missing something and if he just saw it the way you see it he’d know that you’re right. Be curious about the myriad lenses you’re each looking through, how that shapes what you see or don’t, what you feel or don’t, knowing that a story is more convincing than the truth but that there is no ultimate truth in the story of relating. 

Step 6: Come together and circle back. Over and over, as long as it takes. Process and repair the ruptures, old and new. The moments, the trials, those excruciating times you barely got through, holding it together based on promises made by the younger, idealistic and naive parts of you. When this happened… I felt. When that happened… I felt. Ask, invite, inquire. How did you feel? How was it for you? Let yourself be surprised, undefended, and curious about the antagonist you’ve been in the stories you’ve lived together. See each other, hear each other, receive each other, and let each other become who you’ve been longing to become. 

Step 7: Let him change. Allow him to heal. Know that your version and view of what his healing should look like, how long it should take and what should be revealed along the way is not the only version, the only view, the only way. Let him reveal himself to you. His wounded self, his highest self, his evolving self, his future self. Make room for mistakes, regressions and contractions. Soften where you want to harden, not just for him, but for you, for us.  

Step 8: Take responsibility. Own your patterns, dramas and tendencies. Investigate the ways in which you might be dangerous. The moments you miss when you could cultivate more safety. Look for the ways you refuse to be loving or stretch to meet his needs – and I’m not talking about people-pleasing or behaving yourself and overriding your boundaries. I’m talking about being a safe place. Safe for you, safe for him, safe for the we. Find out what helps to create safety and practice, ask for feedback, offer feedback and practice some more. 

Step 9: As repair and repatterning happen, wield a sword in the face of new resentments. Notice when you’re interacting with the “him in your head”, the “him of the past” instead of who is in the room. Stay present, stay vigilant to face the moment as this moment, working with what’s here, what’s happening now, what’s alive and what’s needed. Endeavour to work out the smallest things, do not collect more resentments while clearing out the ones from the past. 

Step 10: Adore and let yourself be adored. Marvel at how far you’ve come, how earnestly you’ve been trying. Recognize how sometimes when you’ve each been at your absolute worst, it was the best you could do. Forgive yourself. Forgive each other. Try again. Dig in and find the place in you that adores. Open yourself to be adored. Imagine the way you want to be loved and when it comes at you let it in and magnify it back. May it be so, may it be so, may it be so. 

Acknowledgment: This little ditty falls into the arena of “write what you know”, which is to say being a woman married to a man who has also coached hetero couples. There are lots of folks here who are queer, non-binary and not in hetero-normative relationships and it’s not my intention to alienate or exclude you. These musings may still be helpful or relatable, even for non-romantic relationships. It feels important to share this acknowledgement because my queer loves, that is to say, those of you I know personally (and quite probably those of you I don’t), you’ve had to put up with so much shit and I don’t want my musings to push you away, but pull you in close and love you, love you, love you.