Advice for the Resentful Housewife

Q: I’ve heard that I should fix myself first in order to have a better relationship. I strive to be more giving, more accepting, and more pleasant—yet I continually find that I am resentful. What gives?

– The Resentful Housewife

A: Dear Resentful Housewife,

In life, everything has a balance. We balance giving with receiving, acceptance with expectations, forgiveness with accountability, spontaneity with rule-following, and doing with relaxing. When you constantly add too much weight to one side of what you are trying to balance—say by giving 100 percent but receiving very little—you become resentful, depressed, exhausted, and even sick. If you are doing all of the giving and he’s doing all of the receiving, then your relationship is out of balance.

In your relationship, it IS important to work on yourself. It’s true that your spouse cannot make you happy. Only you can make yourself happy. Positive thinking, gratitude, and the ability to overlook the small stuff are all good traits to cultivate in yourself. But cultivating those traits will not fix a bad marriage. To fix a bad marriage, you need to stand up for your needs and ask for what you want. You need to understand that all of your feelings are valid, even the ones you wish you did not have. You need to stop trying to be the perfect wife and start trying to be Just You–the woman who is perfectly lovable just the way she is.

You deserve to have a healthy relationship. You deserve a partner who supports you. You deserve to be loved, accepted, admired, and listened to. Often, the first step toward breaking free of your resentment is allowing yourself to feel entitled to get more out of life.

This is what I suggest:

• Whenever you feel resentful, stop whatever you are doing and examine that feeling. Where is it coming from? What is causing it?

• Own your resentment. It is your problem. Come up with a plan to solve it. That plan will probably include figuring out what you need and asking for it. (See next point).

• Put a voice to your resentment. It might be, “I feel resentful when…” or “I feel taken advantage of when…” Once you know how to finish either sentence, voice them to your spouse. Other sentences worth finishing are: “I feel exhausted when…” “I get depressed when…” and “I get angry when…”

• Keep trying. Sticking up for yourself and asking for what you need can be very difficult at first. Think of yourself as a Recovering Doormat. At first, asking for what you need will feel uncomfortable. Eventually, however, it will come naturally, and your resentment will go away.

Do you have advice for The Resentful Housewife? Leave a comment.

Send your relationships questions to Alisa.

To help you go from a bad marriage to a good one, I wrote Project: Happily Ever After’s Relationship Rules, which details some of the techniques I used to save my marriage. It’s yours for free when when you subscribe to this blog by email. Just type your email address into the “subscribe by email” box in the upper right column. I will never sell your email, and I will never spam you. Note: if you are already a subscriber, you can still download it. Just look for the download prompt at the bottom of your email digest.

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