Sometimes, even the most dedicated couples fail to avoid resentment in their relationship.
Resentment is hard to recognize but it facilitates hollow relationships. It tears apart the fundamental bonds that bind two people together. However, the mere presence of animosity does not indicate that your relationship is doomed. It simply indicates that you need to work on determining its cause so that you and your partner can attempt to rebuild the respect and love that you both deserve.
Family and Marriage Therapist Elizabeth Earnshaw addressed the same concern in her Instagram post. In her caption, she explained how carrying out ‘remembering, researching, worrying, and delegating’ in a relationship can get exhausting and end up fairly building up resentment. “To reduce resentment, we need to look at the work going on in our minds as being as time-consuming and as exhausting (maybe even more so) than the more visible physical labor happening in our lives,” she further penned.
In the slides of her post, she articulated in length the four invisible stressors in one’s relationship:
REMEMBERING:
The expert claims that this involves remembering things like calling the dentist and sending RSVP to the wedding invitation and the dry cleaner still has shirts that need to be picked up.
RESEARCHING:
Elizabeth articulated that this includes finding out how to best navigate a challenging parenting situation, how to pay your taxes along with planning on how to handle the situation when you get in a fight with your partner.
WORRYING:
In this, you hold onto family worries such as what will happen if you forget to make that deposit to the bank today.
DELEGATING:
This includes taking care of or noticing the things that are supposed to be done and asking others to do them.
Elizabeth advises that both people in a relationship should feel fair, otherwise the relationship will likely suffer.