Resentment is an important topic to discuss for two reasons; 1) It is an emotion that depletes your energy (spirit or life source), 2) Most people feel they have the ‘right to feel it’ .

As a relationship coach and therapist, I want you to start working on ridding resentment once and for all. Most individuals don’t realize is that resentment is an umbrella term that describes a whole slew of emotions. Resentment often encapsulates feelings of envy, jealousy, shame, guilt, and fear.

For example, let’s say your spouse works from home, whereas you are required to go to work. Your work involves you to be outside, sometimes in very harsh conditions. You may start to feel envy, jealously towards her. Resentment can easily slip in when you do not communicate your feelings. That is the key to avoid resentment – communication. Communication kills resentment.

I would say that resentment is one of the largest complaints I hear from women who come to see me because of their relationships breaking down. Over the course of several years of being in a marriage, resentment can build rather insidiously. I often describe it using the analogy of sediment slowly building between the partner and her husband until they wake up one day and the sediment has created a wall of rock between them.

Then a fog of negative sentiment override settles in, which is a term I have extracted from my work as a Gottman Couples Therapist. This essentially means that the couple starts to only focus on the negative aspects of the partner, and nothing towards the positive aspects of the relationship.

Bottom line, resentment tends to creep in very slowly but if left unchecked, it will deplete the energy and life force from the relationship, possibly to the extent that it can never be rekindled.