Intimacy and resentment: impossible bedfellows

I have previously written about resentment and the harm it does to those who hold on to it and I just love the definition AA uses:

"Resentment is like drinking a cup of poison, and hoping the other one dies from it".

Yeah, put like this, it doesn't make much sense to indulge in it, does it?
But I would like today to highlight another aspect of resentment, the impact it has on intimacy for couples.

Resentment typically builds when one person feels wronged, and the situation is not being remedied by the other - but there is another sneaky element to it - usually the one holding on to resentment isn't doing all they could be doing to clear the air, but rather they seem to wait for the other to "know" that they are hurt and why and how to fix it.

Now, as a couple's communication strategy, hoping for the other to read our mind is not the most efficient way to get our needs met.

Let me give you an example: you don't like it when your partner stays at work for drinks on a Friday night. But because you want to be "the cool girl" or "the cool guy", or not look "needy", you don't say anything, thinking "they must know that I'd rather like to spend that time with them than going out on my side with my colleagues" and you don't want to nag. In the meantime, your partner is convinced that all is rosy, and that you're having just a good a time as they do.

The problem is that after a while, it really pisses you off that you never spend a whole Friday evening together and you start withdrawing from your partner. They may interpret that the right way ("oh no, what have I done wrong?") and start asking questions, but they may just find you more difficult to be with and hence stay out longer on Friday nights.

To cut a long story short, eventually you'll both be further away from each other, and your needs further than ever from being met.

Resentment is about building a wall to keep ourself safe (from rejection, from abandonment, whatever your particular fear is) and hence effectively shutting the other out to prevent them from hurting us.

Intimacy on the other hand is our capacity to make ourself vulnerable, making our connections stronger by opening up. How can you connect on an intimate level, if you don't express your needs in a way that allows you to be heard, and yet does not come across as aggression?

How can you even want to connect, if all you can think of when looking at your partner is that they have done this or not done that? And more importantly, how is your partner supposed to know about this, if you don't say until you're too angry to be reasonable?

You get my drift. I find that the more I cringe about expressing my needs, the more I use plain language to make sure I am heard (nothing worse in my eyes than trying to express my feelings in a way so careful that the other person doesn't hear that it's really important to me or what I'm actually trying to say).

For example: "I have a need to be heard right now - so it is really important for me that you look at me while I'm telling you about my day". Or in the above example, "I would love to spend some more time with you on Fridays - could we maybe meet straight after our workday on some Fridays?"

Talk about what's not OK for you in your relationship, preferably by focusing on what your needs are rather than blaming the other for not fulfilling them.

According to David Schnarch, the main reason for a lack of sexual intimacy is a lack of the other types of intimacy, due to unprocessed resentments.

So basically, if you want intimacy, you first need to kick resentment out of the marital bed...