Ask Ellie: How do I heal my resentment?

Dear Ellie,

I’ve been married for 9 years to someone I’ve known and loved since we were teenagers nearly 25 years ago. (Gulp! How did I get old and boring enough to write that?!?) He is an incredible human being whom I admire and appreciate in so many ways. And yet, for decades now I have witnessed or lived through what I perceive as his pattern of self-destruction, which goes something like: find work/project → dive in deep → be so successful that everyone depends on him → give too much to the project/work and not do self care → crash — literally, in the form of an accident or metaphorically in the form of getting sick or becoming depressed and self-medicating too much. Over the turns through this cycle I have developed resentment for having to be his therapist and caretaker when he wasn’t taking care of himself. We’re going through the cycle again at the moment, but I can see each time that he’s better able to cope and that he course-corrects faster.

A couples therapist recently told me that 90% of the anger couples bring into his sessions has to do with things that occurred in the past, not what’s happening in the present. I know that my anger has less to do with what is actually playing out this week than what played out over the past several years. So I am resolved to try to release my accumulated resentment so that I can better show up (for him and for myself) to what is actually transpiring now. I want to respond to the particularities of this moment rather than reify a perceived pattern that just makes me angry. But how do I let go of the rage?

- Rage Against the Time Machine

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Dear RATTM,

The kind of cycle you’re describing is always so exhausting and aggravating. It can feel like a form of madness, to keep repeating the same thing, over and over. And I think, if anything, it’s even more frustrating when it’s a loved one who’s stuck in the cycle, instead of ourselves. We’re still there, spinning right alongside them, but now we have no agency. All we can do is buckle up and wait for them to grab the wheel.

I completely understand why you’re resentful, after sitting in the passenger seat of this spinning car for more than half your life. Anyone would be. I also completely understand that it feels incredibly shitty to resent someone you love. I’m sorry you’re there.

Honestly, I don’t think therapy, or therapeutic culture in general, always does a great job of dealing with resentment. Cards on the table: I have personally carried years-long resentments towards some of my nearest and dearest, all while seeing therapists and following all the traditional advice I could find on resentment, to little or no avail. Yes, sure, it helped somewhat when I plucked up the courage to be completely honest about my feelings, and even more when the other person was able to actually hear my grievance and acknowledge it. It sounds like you’re already talking, though, and there’s another therapist besides you on the scene, and you’re doing all the obvious stuff, and it’s not working.

Personally, in these situations, a part of me was always left angry and wounded. No matter how frank a discussion I had with my loved one, or how understanding they were, nothing was going to give me back the years I’d lost to their cycles, or the other grievances I was nursing.

So let me ask you another question: if it wasn’t stuck in a circle, what shape would you like your life to follow? Perhaps a straight line? That’s the way most of us in the West conceive of our lives, or at least the ideal version of them. A straight line from life to death, and in walking that line, sure, we suffer life’s inevitable losses, but for the most part, we only gain: love, security, self-awareness, resources, knowledge, wisdom. In this model, tomorrow is fundamentally different from today, a whole new mountain to climb.

And on and on we go, climbing the mountains until we get There. Where? There! Our destination! We might not know where it is or what we’ll find there, but we know that’s where we’re going. This is the myth of progress, which comes hand-in-hand with the model of linear time. And all of this is so accepted and pervasive in Western culture that I for one find it hard to imagine an alternative.

Which can make it feel absolutely fucking maddening — worse than maddening: fundamentally wrong — to get stuck in someone else’s spin cycle. Every loop we take round the circuit is stealing time from us, and we don’t have time to spare. We only have one life, and there are all these mountains to climb to get to where we’re going.

Here is a crazy idea. What if there is no destination? What if what you’re doing right now — loving someone long and deeply enough for them to heal their deepest wounds, no matter how long it takes — is actually the whole point of life? What if it’s not the spinning that’s the problem, but the idea that you’ve got somewhere else to be?

I think if I were you reading that, I’d probably feel pretty irritated. I get it. You’ve been in this car a long time, spinning. And this pattern puts a lot of pressure on you. Whenever your husband becomes so successful that everyone comes to depend on him, he, in turn, leans on you.

That’s a lot of weight to carry. And I’d wager it’s not the only emotional weight you’re carrying. You’re so ready to get out of this pattern and move forward that it probably doesn’t feel like there’s time to tend to your own wounds. Maybe you’re so used to being the strong one, the together one, the one who pulls the team forward, that you’ve convinced yourself you don’t even have any wounds. Maybe you did some work on them in the past and that feels like plenty, because you don’t have time for this and what, are you just going to both spend the rest of your days spinning around your respective traumas?

But we’re all wounded. No matter what the myth of progress (or Scientology) would have us believe, there’s no such thing as going clear. All there is is tending to things as they are, day by day. It’s not the days that are fundamentally different — it’s us, as we move through them. And learning to pay attention to that is a life’s work, and a life’s joy, too, if we let it be.

If this sounds self-indulgent to you, I very much empathize. There’s so much wrong in the world, and so much to get done. But d’you know what’s at the bottom of all that’s wrong in the world? Unhealed wounds. Pain. Severed belonging. People acting out their trauma. And the only answer is radical kindness: coming home to ourselves, first, and then helping others to do the same.

Personally, I’ve resisted this idea for most of my life. I’ve tried to do the minimum necessary work on myself, then push on forward, fixing things, going places, getting shit done. I’m only just beginning to realize how much this fixation on momentum instead of feeling has cost me and the people I love most.

I know it’s not novel to say that you have to live in the moment, get skilled at tending to your own inner landscape. Everyone and their aunt is spouting some kind of Buddhism-lite, these days. But if you’re a person who, like me, just wants to get through this healing shit already and arrive, then it’s really easy to turn “living in the moment” into another item on the checklist, another productivity technique, another way to optimize your life. And if you do that, you’re not attending to your life at all.

Truly living in the moment feels sort of dangerous and reckless, to people who are addicted to progress. It feels like taking time you don’t think you have to do things that aren’t on the to-do list, that aren’t part of the plan. In my experience, it’s rarely about the things I know are good for me. Meditation, exercise, whatever. Sure, do those things.

But please also ask yourself this: What do you want that feels illicit? What are you telling yourself you can’t have? What do you deny yourself every day because you’ve got to keep the train moving?

Maybe it’s as simple as reading a bodice ripper instead of the next worthy novel on your pile. Maybe it’s taking an extra ten minutes in bed in the morning to let all the parts of you coalesce with the unforced timing of a sunrise, even though it will fuck up the whole schedule.

I don’t know what it looks like for you. But I do want to encourage you to start listening to the instincts and impulses that feel dangerous. The things you don’t think you can or should allow yourself. And sure, you probably can’t allow yourself some of them — I’m sure you have responsibilities. But what would it feel like to hear those urges out and find a way to give yourself 1 percent, 5 percent, or even 10 percent of what they’re demanding? Of what you are demanding.

And if, during or after doing this, you feel a mild discomfort, like you’re doing something wrong, please congratulate yourself. That’s the sign that you’re choosing life over progress.

If you can do this, I think your husband’s cycle might start to weigh less heavily on you. Because you won’t be attending to his needs at the expense of your own. You won’t feel that all this healing is just a deviation from the proper course of life. You won’t feel the intense pressure of keeping you both moving forward, because right where you are might start to feel a lot sweeter. That’s my hope for you.

Love,

Ellie