Resentment

I have found that sometimes when an argument ends — it doesn’t

The other person may have left the room. The conversation may have finished. We may even have agreed to disagree.

But somewhere inside, it just carries on.

You replay what was said.

The remark we thought was unfair still stings. You think of the response you should have made and, remembering the conversation, usually rather conveniently, you become increasingly certain that you were right and they were wrong.

Perhaps there is something to be said for not always having an immediate response.

We seem to have developed the idea that knowing what to do quickly is somehow a virtue. I’m not sure it always is.

But that’s another conversation.

And that conversation may be carried for a very long time.

That is where resentment can begin.

It doesn’t always arrive as anger.

Sometimes it is quieter than that.

A disappointment that was never really resolved. A kindness that wasn’t acknowledged. Something somebody did years ago that you have never quite forgiven. The feeling that you gave more than you received. That somebody treated you unfairly. That you deserved better.

And perhaps you did.

That is the difficult part.

Because resentment does not necessarily mean that your grievance is imaginary.

Somebody may genuinely have hurt you.

They may have behaved badly. Betrayed your trust. Taken advantage of you. Failed you when you needed them. Perhaps they have never apologised and never will.

You may be completely justified in feeling hurt.

But there is another question.

How long do you want to continue paying for what they did?

I have carried resentment.

At the time, I could have given perfectly good reasons for it.

I could have explained what happened, what somebody did, why it was wrong and why I was entitled to feel the way I did.

And perhaps I was.

But being entitled to resentment doesn’t necessarily make carrying it worthwhile.

Because the peculiar thing about resentment is that eventually the person who caused it may no longer be involved.

They may have forgotten the incident.

They may have moved on with their life.

They may not even know you are still angry.

Yet there you are, continuing to give the event space in your life.

There is an old idea that resentment is rather like taking poison and expecting somebody else to suffer from it.

I’m not sure I would put it quite that dramatically.

But I understand the point.

Resentment consumes something.

Attention. Energy. Peace of mind. Sometimes relationships that had nothing whatsoever to do with the original hurt.

And occasionally it changes the way we see people.

One betrayal becomes evidence that people cannot be trusted.

One disappointment becomes a reason not to risk another.

One person’s behaviour begins influencing relationships with people we haven’t even met yet.

That seems an extraordinarily high price to continue paying.

None of this means we have to forgive everything.

I think forgiveness is sometimes presented far too casually.

There are things people do that we may never forgive.

Nor does letting go of resentment mean pretending something didn’t happen, excusing unacceptable behaviour or allowing somebody back into our lives.

We can remember.

We can learn.

We can establish boundaries.

We can decide never to deal with that person again.

And still decide that we are no longer prepared to carry them around with us.

Perhaps that is the distinction.

Letting go is not necessarily something we do for the person who hurt us.

Sometimes we do it because they have already taken enough.

There is another side to resentment, though.

Sometimes the person we resent most is ourselves.

A decision we made.

Something we should have done differently.

An opportunity we missed.

A relationship we damaged.

Words we wish we could take back.

We replay those conversations too.

And once again we have the benefit of knowing today what the person we were then did not know.

That can make us a remarkably unforgiving judge.

Perhaps there comes a point when the same question applies:

How long do you intend to keep paying for it?

We cannot change what happened.

We can sometimes repair things. We can apologise. We can learn. We can behave differently next time.

But eventually, there is only the choice between continuing to carry the past or putting some of it down.

I don’t pretend that is always easy.

Some things are remarkably heavy.

But perhaps we don’t have to put everything down at once.

Perhaps we simply stop picking it up quite so often.

And one day we may notice that we haven’t thought about it for a while.

That seems like a reasonable place to begin.

A conversation shouldn’t be one-sided.
You may agree with some of this, disagree completely, or have an experience of your own to share. Either way, I’d be interested to hear what you think.