Beware of this silent, seething relationship-killer

For the last year and a half, Angela has been waging a silent corporate war with her boss. When the two women started working together in finance, they were peers. Even then, Angela felt this coworker was a little too judgmental when Angela took time off work, a little too comfortable asking Angela why she was avoiding her in the hallways. (Angela says she never purposely shirked her.) But about seven months ago, the colleague was promoted to be Angela’s manager. Her behavior became even more intrusive, says Angela (Vox granted her a pseudonym to talk freely about her manager without repercussions). “When I have doctor’s appointments,” Angela, a 33-year-old who lives in Philadelphia, says, “she wants me to put them on her calendar and tell her what they are.” Her boss has even given her negative performance reviews that are in stark contrast to the praise she used to receive from previous managers. Every day, Angela bites her tongue. But internally, she’s stewing on negative emotions. “I know that this is a problem with her and not with me, but the reason I’m feeling resentment is because it’s really pulling me down in all aspects of my life,” Angela says. “Because even if you know that you are not the problem, when somebody is coming at you every single day with aggression, it’ll bring anybody down.” Harboring feelings of resentment is more common than people probably would like to admit — it’s the weapon we silently wield against partners, friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors for wrongs, either real or perceived, that we can’t seem to forgive. The experience is so pervasive, says therapist and registered social worker Audrey Kao, she created a YouTube video summing up all the information she’d shared with clients. Resentment is commonly described as festering or simmering, probably because it doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Envy is wanting what someone else has, according to psychologists, while jealousy is a fear of losing what you have to another person. These are more momentary feelings that can accumulate over time to resentment, Kao says, which is a response to repeatedly being made to feel inferior or being the victim of perceived injustices. Hear a friend discuss their lavish lifestyle long enough and mild annoyance and envy might curdle to resentment. Opposed to envy and jealousy which are action-oriented emotions, resentment can be something you get stuck in. When people hold resentments, they often don’t take action to rectify the situation because “it’s easy to think that the other person’s behavior is the cause of our resentment,” Kao says, “and if only they didn’t behave this way, then I wouldn’t be like this.” You may be hesitant to bring up your feelings out of fear the other person will get angry or end the relationship. When this state of affairs continues for a while, bitterness can take root. If the dam ultimately breaks, months or even years of resentments could come spilling out at once. With a lifetime of hard feelings out in the open, is it even possible to salvage the relationship? Should you even want to? Rather than let ill will accumulate and simmer over time, experts say, in most situations, you should fall back on a bit of evergreen wisdom: communicate your needs in the moment. How resentments form The simmering blaze of bitter indignation stems from a single spark. These inciting events are usually the result of broken expectations or when the resentful party was made to feel inferior, according to Kerry Howells, a visiting professor at Tallinn University in Estonia and the author of Untangling You: How Can I Be Grateful When I Feel so Resentful? You might hold resentment toward your partner when they failed to throw you a surprise birthday party. Or, like in Angela’s case, you could feel ill will toward your boss for constantly undermining you. The blame shouldn’t be placed entirely on one side. When you fail to communicate the fact that you wanted a surprise birthday party, you set your partner up for failure — and yourself for disappointment. “We can interpret that as them not caring,” Kao says. “If that disappointment doesn’t get addressed, and we still don’t decide to talk to the other person about how we really feel, then inevitably, that disappointment is going to be festering until it turns into resentment.” Those who struggle with people-pleasing tendencies in particular may prioritize others’ happiness so that they end up silently resenting their friends for not intuiting their needs. There are, of course, power imbalances that make accusing your boss or pushy mother-in-law of overstepping unwise and unfeasible. “The environment is unsafe — that’s a very real thing,” says psychotherapist Israa Nasir, author of Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More. “Those are structural realities, and so you’re stuck with resentment.” With no outlet, resentment builds over time. You file away every slight, every snide remark, every time your emotional needs aren’t prioritized until it snowballs into something that rankles just underneath the surface. When resentment grows into contempt No one wants their relationship to devolve to a point where they despise the way a friend chews, laughs, speaks. But unchecked resentment can push us to unpleasant emotional territory. “Resentment breeds contempt,” Nasir says, “and contempt is a very powerful emotion.” Once there, you may find it hard to cut the person any slack at all. You therefore detach, give them the silent treatment, or become passive aggressive. You could resort to playing little games like waiting for them to acknowledge your anniversary first or making a backup dinner reservation because you don’t trust your flaky friend to do it. Excess resentment can ratchet up your desire to undermine and backstab, Howells says, as a way of coping with pent up bitterness. You might speak poorly of a coworker you resent not only to vent, but to impact how other colleagues see them, too. “We think that’s making it better, but it’s actually making it worse,” Howells says. “We push the relationship even further away.” Through all of this, the foundation on which your relationship was built, as well as any good memories or positive associations that went along with it, is forgotten. Resentment is the antithesis of gratitude, Howells says, and without it, all we see is a person to blame. “Gratitude is about awakening to everything that I receive from others,” she says,” and resentment puts us in this state of ruminating about what’s been taken away from us.” Addressing resentment without ruining the relationship There is a wrong way to air your grievances: unloading them all at once. It’s nearly impossible to rebound after hearing how your partner or your friend has been carrying a grudge for all the choices you’ve made in the relationship. Before launching into a discussion, decide if it’s even appropriate to bring up resentments. First, think about the role you played. Did you tell your friend you wanted to spend more time one-on-one and they keep planning group outings, or did you hope they’d just know? Are you really putting more work into a relationship or do you have unrealistic expectations of what dating should look like? “Resentment always happens when a need is not being met, but you have to think about what you are doing to create an environment where your needs are not being met, and, of course, assessing the environment itself,” Nasir says. When you fail to take ownership over your own actions (or inaction), you’re likely to place blame on others and find the cycle repeating in other relationships. In some situations, bringing up your resentments isn’t necessarily helpful. For instance, if you’re single and jealous a friend is getting married, telling them as much might only sow discord. What would be the point of the conversation? “That might be a sign that it’s more about your insecurity, or that you’re not happy with your own life,” Kao says. In that case, your efforts would be better spent on working toward your goals. A friend’s success or happiness does not negate or prevent your own. But there are still plenty of scenarios where it’s worth having a direct, clarifying conversation in order to address your unmet needs. Kao has observed that people often drop hints about their feelings (“We never do date night,” or “You always cancel our dinners”) without coming out and saying, “I feel unimportant when you spend more evenings at work than you do with me,” or “I don’t feel valued when you keep changing our plans.” The key is to communicate your hurt head-on without blaming the other person, which is why Kao and Nasir recommend therapist-favorite “I statements” that focus on describing your feelings and how you’d like to mend the relationship. (No, “I resent you” doesn’t count.) For instance, if you’re starting to resent a friend who seems to leave you out of every social event, you could say, “I feel like I don’t know what’s going on with you. I think it’s because we’re both so busy. I’d love a monthly hang to catch up.” “It’s always helpful to come to the table with a solution, because that’s the repair piece,” Nasir says. “The solution is not just ‘you need to change.’ It’s this thing needs to change, or this needs to be added, or this needs to be removed.” The whole point of the conversation should be to preserve and improve the relationship. Try to broach these conversations sooner rather than later. The longer you sit in the hurt, the more you might be tempted to dump a backlog of resentments. But don’t race into them too quickly while the emotions are still so fresh that you end up saying something you regret. Finding that sweet spot can be as difficult as having the conversation itself. Workplace resentments are far trickier since there are risks to your livelihood. You could try to tell your boss you feel undervalued or ask a coworker not to put you down in meetings, but they might not be compelled to change because, technically, they don’t have to. These people could also make your life more difficult. Howells suggests writing all your resentments in a letter that you’ll never send or working with a therapist to parse through your emotions. The greatest gift we can give ourselves is knowing when to pick our battles. Some habits — like your partner’s penchant for showing up to every event 15 minutes late — are hard to break and it isn’t worth feeling bitter over them. The rest of the relationship is worth more than a few embarrassing, fashionably late entrances. Taking a hard look at resentments — and what causes them — can also be freeing. Admitting to yourself that you’re jealous and resentful of a friend whose career is thriving can feel uncomfortable “because that means taking responsibility for your own unhappiness,” Kao says. “But this is actually a very liberating thought to have, because that means that if we cause our own unhappiness, then we can also solve it.” That firmly places the power in your own hands.