Spiraling out of Connection

I’m resenting how little we talk about resentment.

I’m pretty thrilled that as a society we understand the consequences of not doing the dishes. The precarious pile, the smell, the eventual flies. Even those of us that struggle to do the dishes regularly can grasp the downsides, as finding a clean bowl and spoon for some cereal becomes a challenge. I have never had to explain to an adult the virtues of a clean and empty kitchen sink.

I wish we had the same ingrained societal understanding of what I’m calling the resentment spiral. These spirals are everywhere, and I promise you enter one regularly or at a minimum are entangled in a few. Yet I so rarely hear them being acknowledged and discussed, despite the massive negative impact they have on our everyday lives.

The Resentment Spiral

Your friend shows up twenty minutes late for your lunch date, muttering a brief apology. You’re pissed off and feel like they don’t respect you, but they said sorry, so you bury that feeling – yet it sticks with you, and over time drives a wedge between the two of you.

You ask a question in a work meeting, but the presenter blows you off. Five minutes later, someone else asks the same question and gets a detailed response. You feel annoyed and ignored, and nurse a grudge against the presenter for months. She can tell you have it out for her, but has no idea why.

Your partner has never – not once – cleaned the shower since you started living together. Every time you step into it you feel a surge of anger at their inability to show you some basic kindness and respect. You didn’t mention it at first as it seemed trivial, but at this point you’re convinced you’ll erupt in rage the moment you bring it up.

Something happens that makes you feel unseen, or disrespected, or like you don’t matter or aren’t important. You want to keep the peace, or you don’t feel like it’s a big enough deal to say something, so you stay silent. But by staying silent, resentment builds up within you. That resentment makes you feel less connected to the perpetrator, which makes it even harder for you to speak up the next time something happens.

The Resentment Spiral - The more it repeats, the harder staying in a relationship becomes.

Sometimes the resentment builds to the point where it explodes and the relationship fractures, but often it just festers, acting as a barrier to deeper connection. We want relationships in which we feel understood, welcome, like we belong – and resentment acts as a corrosive toxin, eating away at the positive regard we feel and safety we crave.

These spirals are natural and understandable. We’re taught to keep the peace, to be agreeable, to fit in, to keep things copacetic. Staying quiet is easy. Staying quiet means avoiding potential conflict, potential anger. Resentment, however, is insidious and sneaks up on you over time. Speaking up means doing the hard, scary thing now to avoid a worse thing down the road. No wonder we default to avoiding it.

Stepping out of the Spiral

Several years ago, while on a hike with a friend, I was on the receiving end of the breaking of a resentment spiral.

My friend reminded me that the last time we had hung out, she’d started telling me about struggles she was having with her dad. I hadn’t asked any followup questions – I just responded with “huh” and changed the subject. She told me how disconnected and alone that had made her feel, and that she really didn’t want that as part of our friendship, and imagined I didn’t either. She didn’t attack me, or even blame me – just stated what had happened, and the impact it had on her. I could’ve very easily gotten defensive, or tried to make excuses – but instead I felt a surprising surge of gratitude. Here was a friend making a vulnerable effort to deepen our friendship, and giving me a concrete thing I could do differently to make her feel more seen, and us more connected.

This was an ideal situation. I was in a position of being very open to feedback, and she approached the subject deftly and kindly. I don’t want to trivialize how complex and tricky resolving a conflict with another person can be. Entire books have been written on the subject. But I’ll offer a basic set of steps I follow when attempting to prevent a resentment spiral from starting in the first place.

1. Notice - Recognize you’re either in a resentment spiral or at risk of entering one.

2. Name - Tell your partner in this spiral what you’re noticing, and set up a time to discuss it. “Hey, I’m noticing some frustration coming up in me around how you load the dishwasher, would you be up to chat about that for a bit after lunch?”

3. Repair - Talk about what happened, and how it made you feel. The goal here is not to place blame, but for both sides to feel heard and understood – to avoid resentment from building.

Avoiding the Resentment Spiral

While these steps can be easy with the right person and situation, there are plenty of people who may react defensively the moment you bring something frustrating up. But in my experience, for every one person unable to sit down and have a difficult conversation, there are twenty people completely capable and willing, if asked. I’d even hazard to say that most people find this approach refreshing and appreciate the honesty. And in the situation where it blows up – where I approach someone with a kindly-worded request to discuss a frustration and they explode at me or shut down – that’s also important information for me to have, information I can use to adjust my boundaries and relationships accordingly.

I wish resentment spirals were a completely normal thing to talk about. I want to be able to say to anyone, “Hey, looks like you might be falling into a resentment spiral with your partner,” or “Could we talk about what just happened? I’d hate for either of us to get into a resentment spiral around this.” We’re not quite there yet. Then again, talking about anxiety and mental health isn’t nearly the taboo it was even ten years ago. We’re making progress.

Resources

The Being Well podcast has two excellent episodes related to this topic, one on reducing existing resentment, and another on handling conflict in relationships.

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