How to Let Go of Resentment in Relationships
- Brainz Magazine
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
A former lawyer turned mystic, Jessica Falcon is an International Soul Embodiment Guide & Relationship Expert. She guides you to embody your power, reclaim your sovereignty, and experience true freedom. Tune into her Soul Sovereignty & Sexuality Podcast.
Many people struggle with deep-seated feelings of resentment, anger, or bitterness in relationships. They have a hard time expressing these feelings or moving past them, which can lead to unhappiness, disconnection, and a lack of intimacy. Let’s dive into how to let go of resentment to improve your relationships and reconnect with your partner.
Resentment in relationships is common. Many people hold onto feelings of resentment because they do not know how to process them emotionally or speak about them with their partner. Yet holding in your feelings only creates further tension, disconnection, and separation in relationships. If you want to reconnect with your partner and build intimacy, you have to face the resentment you have buried inside.
Resentment often arises in relationships when you feel
Unheard
Invisible
Betrayed
Ignored
Frustrated
No matter what you say or how you say it, you still feel like they do not hear you. They are not listening. They keep making excuses. They do not apologize for their behavior or hold themselves accountable. You feel like you are banging your head against a wall trying to get them to understand you.
Resentment often arises most when you express your feelings or boundaries to someone, and they simply ignore them. It is the holding in of the anger. The feeling of being violated or wronged. You feel hurt. Sad. At a loss for words.
“I have already told you this a million times.”
“No matter what I say, you keep ignoring me.”
“Why can’t you stop doing that?”
Perhaps you feel like you have no choice. No voice. No way out of the resentment that is eating you alive.
Why resentment in relationships is intimately connected with boundaries (or a lack thereof)
Resentment has to be acknowledged and faced in order to fully free yourself and move forward. Most people focus on getting the other person to:
Understand you
Hear you
See you
Validate you
Give you permission
This is giving your power away. It is wanting the other person to see what you see instead of acknowledging and validating your own inner experience.
Keeping your focus on the other person will keep you in cycles of anger, bitterness, and resentment. You have to bring your awareness inward and deeply acknowledge what you feel, even if, or especially when, the other person does not want to hear it. They might tell you to “just get over it,” or “you’re making too big of a deal about it,” or “it doesn’t really matter.”
It does matter if it is rising within you. Feelings matter, not because they are your “truth,” but because your feelings are a guidepost to the deeper truth of your soul. They exist for a reason. Many people who harbor resentment unconsciously minimize or diminish their own feelings. This only adds fuel to the fire of resentment.
When my clients tell me they want another person to see or hear them, I encourage them to see and hear themselves more deeply. Spend time in silence listening to the emotions coming up within you. What are they? Write them down. Get clear. Acknowledge their presence. Let them move. Hold the consciousness of an observer as you witness the emotion with pure curiosity. Why are you here? What are you showing me? What do you want me to see?
Under every emotion is a thought. Each thought leads to a belief. Each belief is one you inherited from the world, your parents, or others. Is it yours? Is it your truth? Is it a thought or a belief you want to keep? This is especially important for habitual or recurring emotions like resentment.
Resentment is usually associated with bitterness, anger, and rage. The anger is there for you. It is saying, “See me.” It alerts you to the need for a boundary. It says, “No more. I will not tolerate this. I deserve better.”
The anger is not a problem. Ignoring it is the problem. It wants you to step up and act on your own behalf. To speak the truth of your heart to the person who hurt you. It wants you to stop accepting excuses and actually hold them accountable. It wants you to stop taking care of the other person’s emotional experience at the expense of your own.
If you feel resentment toward your partner, it is very likely that you also experience:
A fear of conflict
A fear of upsetting them
A fear of hurting their feelings
All three of these signify self-sacrificing patterns rooted in putting people above you rather than next to you as an equal. Their feelings do matter, and so do yours. Neither person’s feelings are more valid or more important. Each of you is worthy of being seen, heard, and honored.
The only way to get to the root of the conflict is to talk about it
What is coming up for you?
What is coming up for me?
How do we choose to navigate this together?
The keyword here is choice. A boundary is a choice. Resentment in relationships builds when you are not choosing for you. Perhaps you are waiting for the other person to make a choice instead. Sometimes this is necessary. Will they, for example, make the choice to seek help or shift their behavior?
In the meantime, you still have to be clear about the choice you are making. Are you choosing to wait until they make a change? Are you choosing to tolerate their behavior? Are you choosing to take care of yourself, your own needs, feelings, and desires? What are you choosing?
You let go of resentment in relationships when you
Acknowledge the resentment and the underlying emotions
Get curious about what the resentment, emotions, and related thoughts are telling you about you and about the relationship
Decide what your response is and what, if any, action you need to take so you feel heard, seen, and acknowledged, at least by yourself if not by them
I have witnessed many people consistently try to get another person to see them when that person consistently shows how incapable they are of doing so.
Another person’s incapacity to love you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
The way out of resentment is:
Even if they cannot love me right now, how can I love myself?
Even if they are not hearing me, how do I hear my own experience?
Even if they are not seeing me, what is it I need to see, do, say, or act on my own behalf?
How can I honor myself even when they cannot?
The resentment fades when you stop ignoring yourself. When you see what you have been trying to get them to see. The more you see yourself, the more others can actually see you, for who you truly are, not who they want you to be or how you make them feel.
If somebody truly loves you, they want to see you. They want to hear you. They want to honor you. Do this for yourself if you love yourself, and let them follow suit. Doing so ends the patterns that created the resentment in the first place. Both of you are set free.
To dive deeper into honoring your boundaries, speaking your truth, and reclaiming your sovereignty in relationships so you experience true freedom, you can work with me 1:1 in a Divine Activation Portal or explore the monthly online Temple of Divine Feminine Power.
Jessica Falcon, Soul Embodiment Guide & Relationship Expert
A former lawyer turned mystic, Jessica Falcon is an International Soul Embodiment Guide & Relationship Expert. She guides you to embody your power, reclaim your sovereignty, and experience true freedom.
Jessica spent years researching religious history, ancient civilizations, and mythology to get to the root of unequal power dynamics in relationships. She has identified the core beliefs and wounds that must be confronted to experience shared power and freedom in relationships.
She leads retreats, workshops, and online portals of transformation to help you embody your divinity, activate your sexual life force energy, and revolutionize your relationships. Tune into her Soul Sovereignty & Sexuality Podcast on all major platforms.
