"The Lure of Resentment"

(Much of the following sharing was taped at a panel meeting at the Detroit, MI, International Convention in July 2000. It has been edited for clarity and length.)

• It says in the AA Big Book that resentment is our number one killer; it causes the most problems in our lives. At one time I lived in resentment, and was not able to resist its lure. It occurred to me that if there is a lure of resentment, I have to be at the receiving end of it; I have to take it in. My part in resentment is obsessing about another’s words or actions to me. Often my resentments come from things that happened when I was younger, and something done today brings up my past feelings of hurt or pain. I obsess about it. I have learned through this program that when I obsess I only get bitter. 

One of my shortcomings is resentment and not being able to forgive.  When I came to the program, I’d been hurt too much, and said I’d never trust again because it causes too much pain.  I was told that resentments cause us to either become bitter or to become better people.  We all know bitter people.  I am not attracted to them and don’t want to be around them.  I didn’t want that for me. 

Today, as soon as some event bothers me, I try to figure out why it bothers me, and usually it goes back to some unhealed issue in my past.  Each time I face an issue from my past, I heal a bit more.  I use my modern-language version the Seventh Step prayer to let go of my resentments:  My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.  I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.  Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.  This prayer shows me that our program is ultimately about getting rid of our defects in order to be able to help others.  I have been given so much.  I have good people around me to show me how to get through things, and I no longer want to live in resentment. 

• The most freeing time in my life was when I finally faced the pain in my life caused by my sexaholic spouse and was able to pray for him.  I find I can’t hate someone for whom I pray.  This works for me, and I eventually get to a point of forgiveness.  Now I realize that people don’t wake up in the morning and ask how they can “get me” today.  That’s not how people work; they are simply living their own lives.  I’m not perfect, and I’ll continue my lifelong process of learning to live my life free of resentment.

• Today I’m not feeling very resentful.  Three and a half years ago I was quite different.  I responded to my husband’s character defects with a pitiful cry of “Why me?”  We went through a very difficult divorce and subsequent child custody battle.  It was a very painful time, and I was only able to let go of that pain through the Steps and my Higher Power. 

• In the past I set myself up to be resentful by having unrealistic expectations.  For example, my youngest boy’s father has trouble being present for my son, and he doesn’t meet my expectations of what a father should be.  When I speak to him, I need to remember that he’s emotionally only about 14 years old, and that I am much the same when we speak about our son.  I was convinced that if I said the exact right thing at the right time to my husband, things would turn out as I wanted them to.  My expectations were not met when I took this approach.  My sponsor told me that if I explain something in more than 4 sentences, I’m saying too much.  If I’m still not understood, I should then repeat only the same thing until either I’m heard, or realize he just won’t get it.  If he doesn’t get it, I need to let it go.  I try to ask what God wants me to learn from a situation, rather than “Why me?”  It takes me out of the victim role.

• I used to have no boundaries; I wasn’t taught them, and am still working on setting and keeping them.  My experience with addicts is they are good at getting around, underneath, over, or through boundaries.  I’d often break my own boundary of not getting in an argument with my husband.  But I know it’s not worth losing the two days it takes out of my life each time I let it happen.  So it’s up to me to ensure my own serenity.  To avoid arguments, I try to pay attention to timing.  If I’m HALTS (hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or sick), it’s not a good time for me to talk about anything.  I knew I needed to respect and communicate this when someone wanted to engage me in conversation at one of these times, but would often get hooked in regardless.  I can’t think clearly when my fists are clenched; I’m too focused on one thing, like a hamster on a wheel.  When I was wrapped up in resentment, I’d miss exits on the freeway, or park at the wrong building.  That’s how resentments feel for me.  Learning to keep my boundaries has kept me from having resentments.

• Resentments are dangerous for me.  I grew up in a spin cycle of hurt and depression, and that’s where I tend to go when something that is uncomfortable for me happens.  I think I go there because it’s a familiar place.  It’s hard for me to see that I have the choice to be happy.  I’ve learned that detachment and prayer for those who hurt me help lessen my resentments.  I call four people every day to keep myself in reality.  Part of my problem is that I often don’t know how to handle something.  I never learned the words to express my feelings, so I get stuck.  I ask others for help with putting my situation into words.  One of the phrases I recently learned is  “Have I offended you in some way?”  It seems simple, but it’s powerful.  After I get my courage up, I’m able to say this to the person who has upset me.  This works, because if it has nothing to do with me, they can’t answer. It helps make the situation clear.

• I heard once that resentment is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.  I’m learning I can prevent becoming resentful.  I need to face my fear of communicating my feelings, versus going to that crazy place.

• Expectations equal resentment for me.  I expect a romantic relationship from my sexaholic husband.  We’re supposed to do certain things, and we don’t.  In my head I think “If you love me enough and I tell you that something hurts me, you won’t do it to me.”  But I realize now that he’s not doing it to me.  I also resent my father, who was very abusive.  I don’t like him.  What he did was wrong, and I can’t feel everything is OK.  I know it’s OK for me to feel the hurt and pain, and while I haven’t forgiven the abuse, holding on to the resentment only hurts me. It helps when I can look at it that way.

• At a recent S-Anon convention, I’d arranged to go on a day trip with some of the people in the program.  Somehow, I missed the bus, both literally and figuratively, and got so angry I had packed up my bags and was ready to leave the convention.  But before I left, I made a program call.  After my explanation, the person asked if I was willing to discount the multitude of positive things that had passed between this group of people and me for one little thing negative thing that was a simple mistake.  This gave me the realization that I often look for one thing to give myself permission to feel resentment in a situation.  I’m working to change this.

• When I consider the word resentment, I remove the last two letters, which leaves “resent me.”  My resentments all trace back to some event that I resent myself for allowing to happen and/or to continue to happen.  I’m not saying that I caused all these events in my past, but I held on to them because I blamed myself for putting up with so many unacceptable things for so long.  Acceptance is the opposite of resentment for me.  I see now that I dealt with the situations in my past in the way I was best able to at the time, and that I’m now able to let go of them because I’ve been given a whole new way of living my life.  A quote from page 449 of the AA Big Book reads “…I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.”  I’ve learned to trust that my Higher Power has the right timing for what happens in my life, and that my role is simply to continue doing the footwork.