Resentment

I got to thinking about resentment and how it seems to play a different role in different people's lives.  It probably has a relationship to misery.  Except for one small stage in my 20s where I experienced some resentment towards my parents for things I didn't understand, I can't recall another time where resentment ever sat with me.

On the other hand, my ex-husband had let resentment towards me fester silently for close to two decades by the time we separated - resentment for things he had never told me, resentment for things that were not my fault, etc.  He bottled it all up.  And I doubt I was the only person he held resentment towards.

If I'm honest, I didn't do any better communicating about my needs with him.  When I learned I would not be heard and that anything I said would just lead to me soothing is ego, I stopped trying.  I went silent.  I shrunk myself.  Yet, resentment did not build in me.

The difference between him and me was entitlement.

He felt entitled to everything.  His needs were always central.  And he expected me to read his mind as to those needs.  I remember going back as far as our dating days how much it rubbed me wrong the way his whole family felt they were entitled.  That entitlement created expectations that people should cater to them and make room for them without any effort on their part.  And when people didn't, the bitterness was palpable, bitterness that often turned into resentment.

I felt entitled to nothing.  I had been disappointed enough in my life and let my sense of worth get whittled away in the process that I had just stopped expecting anything.  It's hard to hold onto resentment over something you don't believe you even deserve.

Today, I have such a clearer sense of my worth.  I still don't feel entitled.  It's on me to communicate my needs and find the spaces where those needs can be willingly met and I can willingly contribute to others' needs.  I have to do the work to get my needs met.  I don't expect them to just magically be met.

I was thinking about the connections I am making as I walked to the train station this morning.  One woman I would like to get to know a lot better has not responded to my text from several days ago proposing we get together again.  She admitted to being bad about texting so that might be the case here, but I acknowledged to myself this morning that she also just might not become one of my people.  And that's okay.

I don't want to force connections.  I want to stay honest about who I am so people can see me authentically.  And I feel confident I will find my people eventually.

So I hope that is leading me to a healthier balance of communicating my needs to avoid shrinking myself but not swinging to the other extreme of feeling entitled such that I left resentment build up.