Ep. 61: Is Resentment Making You Question Your Marriage?

You used to give your spouse the benefit of the doubt. Now you don't.

Somewhere along the way, the small stuff stopped feeling small. The forgotten text, the late pickup, the dishes left again — they don't just annoy you anymore. They feel like proof of something. And when your spouse apologizes now, some part of you doesn't quite believe it.

If you're guarded instead of tender. If you're keeping score without meaning to. If effort from your spouse gets met with suspicion instead of relief — you're not broken, and you're not imagining it. You're in one of the most consequential stages of the divorce decision process, the one where resentment quietly hardens into self-protection.

In this episode, we break down why this kind of resentment is fundamentally different from the friction every long-term couple feels — using an analogy that makes the shift impossible to unsee. We'll cover the signs you're in this stage, what's actually driving it beneath the surface, and the real risk of staying here too long: a heart that closes faster than it can be reopened.

Plus, reflection questions to help you find out what's really underneath the anger.

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:00.876)

Hey there everyone, welcome back to the show. Today on the Divorce Decision podcast, we are going to be talking about resentment. Now, I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill, I'm annoyed with you because you left your shoes in the middle of the floor again, type of resentment. I'm talking about the kind that starts making you question how you feel about your husband or your wife, the kind of resentment that has you questioning.

Whether or not you want to stay married. So, what we're gonna do is we are going to look at how unresolved hurt turns into resentment, how that resentment can start changing the way that you see your spouse, and some signs that you might be in the fracture, which is stage four of the divorce decision process. And then of course, I'm gonna share with you why staying here too long can actually make it harder for you to know what it is you actually want.

So let's just start with how do you know if you're carrying around this actual level of resentment? Because I mean, let's be honest, every long-term relationship is going to have some. Okay. Here is like in a snapshot what it looks like. You used to give your spouse the benefit of the doubt, and now you don't. So they forget to text you back. They're like late again picking up the kids.

They leave the dishes just sitting there in the sink after you've asked them a hundred times to please put it into the dishwasher. Or you find out that your spouse made dinner plans with your in-laws without talking to you about it first. Now, objectively, you know, like logically you know that this particular thing probably isn't that big of a deal, but it feels like a big deal. And if you're in this kind of resentment, you know exactly what I mean, okay?

But it feels like a big deal because you're not just reacting to the forgotten text or you know those dinner plans. You're not just reacting to what happened today. You're thinking, of course you forgot. Of course I have to remind you. Well, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't take me into consideration before making plans, right? Suddenly, this very small thing feels like one more piece of evidence in a case.

Kari Hoskins (02:24.77)

That you have been building against your spouse for years. Okay. Now, if you can relate to some version of that, you are definitely probably in some deeper resentment. Okay. So if you have been listening to this series from the beginning, you know that the stages of the divorce decision process tend to build on one another, though of course they are not perfectly linear. You can move backward.

You can skip a stage, you can cycle through the stages, you can stay in one stage for a long time. And of all of the stages, I would say this stage, stage four resentment, the fracture, is probably the stage that people stay in the longest. like I literally right now I'm working with someone, she has been in this stage of her marriage for 25 years. That is a long time to be in deep, deep resentfulness.

Okay. And now another really quick thing about these stages is that you and your spouse can absolutely be in different stages at the same time. I have met so many couples, and it's really common for like one of you say to be in stage five, which is why they come seek me out, right? They're questioning divorce, and the other one is just like over there living their life. Like they know that there are some issues, but they are unaware of how significant.

Those issues have become. Okay. But generally speaking, I'm just gonna do this really quickly before you get to the fracture, something has been happening for a while. There's stage one, annoying, when you privately start recognizing that you are really, really unhappy. Then there's stage two, which is truth telling, when some version of that unhappiness has finally come out, like you've had that conversation, hopefully, with your spouse.

And then there's stage three, which is testing. And we talked about testing last week where you start watching. Are changes happening? Are the changes real? Are they going to last? Are we actually doing something this time like different this time around? Or are we just gonna end up like right back where we started? Okay. And this is actually a really big turning point for a lot of couples, especially if you end up right back where you started.

Kari Hoskins (04:50.286)

Okay, so maybe there were a couple of good weeks or a couple of good months and your husband or your wife was trying and you were trying and you guys were making some progress, but then some of those issues come back up. And every time that happens, I'm gonna call that a round. After each round of that, your disappointment just gets worse and it starts to change. And this is really where I see people going from stage three into stage four.

Where you're not just annoyed, frustrated, or sad. Now you are angry. And now you are constantly irritated by your spouse. You become more guarded. And in your head, you're probably thinking things like, why am I still explaining this? How many times do we have to have this conversation? Or I think one that I probably hear the most often is like, I shouldn't have to keep asking.

So I'll be working with someone and I'll say, you know, have you had this discussion? And they'll say, Well, I haven't, you know, had this conversation in probably two years because I'm frustrated. Like I shouldn't have to keep having the same conversation, right? That, my friends, is the fracture. That is where the pain or the disappointment starts making you pull away from them. You're tired. I totally get it. You're tired of getting hurt. You're tired of asking. You're tired of hoping.

You're tired of being disappointed. And I do think it's important for you to hear this though, okay? I do not want you to hear like that deep resentment and the tiredness and the frustration and the anger automatically means that your marriage is over. It does not automatically mean that. Really, the bigger question is: why has your resentment become so heavy? Okay.

And like I said before, every long-term relationship accumulates some resentment. I mean, come on, you guys. You put two imperfect people together living in the same house for 20, 10, 20, 30 years, and then you add jobs and kids and money and in-laws and sex and dishes and chores and vacations and aging parents, right? And of course, like there are all these things that are adding stress. And there's gonna be hurt and disappointment and things that bug you. Okay. So

Kari Hoskins (07:16.866)

The issue is not whether or not you have resentment. The bigger issue is why is it so heavy? And really the answer to that question is what happens after the disappointment? What happens after the hurt? What happens after the disagreement? Was it repaired? Okay? Because there's that's really where resentment starts accumulating. Not simply from being hurt or disagreeing or being in a conflict.

But from being hurt or disappointed or whatever like emotion you experience the most and never feeling like it was fully dealt with. Okay. And this takes us back to something that I talk about a lot on this podcast because I think it is so important. And it's the concept of open loops. So an open loop is something that happened in your relationship, and you can go all the way back even to your dating relationship.

That was never fully resolved. So, as a quick reminder, all relationships go through like this natural cycle of harmony, disharmony, and repair. And when you are in harmony and everything is great, and then something happens that creates disharmony, say there's hurt or disagreement or conflict about something, and it's not fully resolved, and

you haven't like fully talked about the impact of it. Maybe there were apologies, maybe the argument technically ended, but you have not really talked about the underlying hurt that was never resolved. That means that you never fully come out of that disharmony into repair. And that loop of harmony, disharmony and repair was never fully closed. Okay.

now I am gonna do an entire episode on how to close a loop, but that's for another time. But the bottom line here is that it's those open loops that start to accumulate underneath your relationship that is what is contributing to your resentment. So I was trying to come up with a metaphor and I really like this, I like this like analogy, I guess. So I want you to picture, like, say those open loops almost like bruises.

Kari Hoskins (09:36.781)

So let's say you whack your foot or your shin on the corner of the bed. I say that because I literally just did that. We have this bed where like the legs of the bed stick out a little bit further. And I swear I nail myself on that constantly. Okay. So let's say you whack your shin or your foot on the corner of the bed and it hurts, and you get a really bad bruise. Eventually that bruise is going to heal. But then a few weeks later,

you you know, I'm sorry, let me back up. So let's say you whack your shin or your foot on the corner of the bed and it hurts and you get a bruise, but eventually it heals. And a few weeks later you can press on that exact same spot and there's nothing there anymore. It doesn't hurt anymore. That is what good repair can do in a relationship. Something painful happens, you deal with it, you both understand the impact that the incident had, right? And there's ownership.

And maybe there's behavior changes. And eventually that injury, that bruise isn't affecting your relationship anymore. It's done, it's healed, it's over. But now imagine hitting that same spot again before the bruise is healed. Like you barely bump it this time, but whoo, boy, did that hurt, right? Probably more than the first time, at least that's what happens like to me. And then of course, you hit it again and again.

And at some point you aren't just like casually walking past that bed. Trust me, I make a wide berth around that bed, right? You're watching for it. And you protect your foot or you protect your leg. And if something even gets close to that spot, you flinch. That that's exactly what begins to happen emotionally in your relationship. And that's one of the hallmarks of the fracture. Okay. So it's that bruise that never gets fully healed. It's just kind of sitting there.

underneath the skin, underneath your relationship. So I created just a list of some common things that can lead to this type of open loop resentment. Okay, and it's like a list that I got from just basically pulling together all of the people that I've worked with. Okay. So maybe your spo your spouse, excuse me, has disappointed you around let's say the lack of communication or the lack of affection or sex.

Kari Hoskins (12:03.202)

Or there's drinking issues, or there's money conflict, or their phone, or parenting, you know, disagreements, or the way that you know you guys have divided the labor, or maybe one of you shuts down every time when you're trying to talk about something difficult. And at first, each incident, you know, may have felt like its own little thing, but eventually all those little things become connected, okay?

And so something happens now, today, and your brain immediately, you know what it does. It pulls up this entire list of all the other times that this has happened before. Okay. And that's when you start thinking, here we go again, or sure, like you always do this. Or and then eventually what happens is we go from here, here we go again, and you always do this to this is who you are.

And that's the one that matters most because you have moved from you did something to hurt me, not to hurt me, I'm sorry, because we moved from you did something that hurt me to this is who you are. And once you start moving from judging the behavior to judging your husband or your wife, something else starts happening, you guys. That old pain begins shaping how you perceive or interpret.

What your spouse does now, even if what they're doing now is actually different than what they used to do. It's like you can't even see it. And that is a huge, I would say, just a huge thing to be aware of if you know that you are either in stage four or you can feel yourself in some deep resentment. So one of the hallmarks of this stage is that you begin interpreting new information.

or perceiving new information, like filtering it through your old pain, filtering it through your history. So let's say that you have spent years asking your spouse to be more affectionate. And then suddenly they start trying. Now earlier, you know, in the relationship, you might have thought, well, yay, finally, they're listening, right? But when you're in the fracture stage, they reach over to hold your hand and your first thought is, what are they up to?

Kari Hoskins (14:28.29)

Why are they doing this now? Or they plan a date and you think, well, how long is this gonna last? Maybe they apologize and part of you is already saying, Well, yeah, it's too little, too late. I've heard this before. Maybe you start therapy and instead of feeling hopeful, you feel irritated. So now you're willing to go, right? And so what's underneath all of this is suspicion, right? You're suspicious of them. You don't trust it. You don't trust them. You don't trust the word. And I think that

What makes this stage so complicated is that sometimes those suspicions are indeed, you know, based on reality. It's based on your history. Okay. You have heard that apology before. You have watched things get better for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then go right back. So I am definitely not telling you to ignore what you know because your history matters and the patterns matter.

But this is also where you have to be aware of something else. Resentment becomes an accumulation of evidence for a conclusion that you've already drawn or reached about your husband or your wife. And so what happens is you stop noticing information that doesn't fit that old story. And so you can really easily overlook or dismiss true effort and true change.

What does this actually look like in real life? I just want to kind of paint this picture because let's be honest, like you're legitimate not walking around going, well, you know, resentment, it's become the filter through which I interpret everything my spouse does. Well, I actually think about that because I'm a nerd. but you probably are not thinking like that, right? You just start noticing that you're different. You're different with them. So let's do a quick check, okay, to see if you are experiencing.

any of these things that I'm about to list. All right. Here we go. The same issues keep coming up and the way you resolve them has not really changed. You feel more guarded around your spouse than tender, even when you aren't in conflict, even when they haven't done anything wrong. Things that used to annoy you now make you genuinely angry. You have thoughts like I shouldn't have to keep asking for this all of the time.

Kari Hoskins (16:51.468)

You start emotionally pulling back from them. Maybe you don't tell your spouse as much. You don't reach for them anymore when you're upset. You don't talk to them about things that are bothering you. And you don't bother bringing up certain things anymore because you already know how the conversation is gonna go. Their apologies don't land the same like they used to, and their promises don't mean as much as they used to. And here, my friends, is a big one. Even when your spouse does something positive.

You have a really hard time either receiving it or even noticing it altogether. And instead of thinking, well, that was nice, your first thought might be something like, What do they want? How long is this gonna last? Or yeah, nice try, too little, too late. Okay. So if you are hearing yourself, okay, in any of those areas, or in, you know, or I'm sorry, let me redo that.

If any of those things resonate with you, you might be somewhere in the middle of the fracture. Okay. And if anger is one of the things that you're noticing, I want you to stay there for a minute. Okay. Because anger is usually or you know often one of the more visible parts of the stage. Okay. But anger is often sitting on top on top of something else. Okay. It's masking something else. It's masking hurt, disappointment, fear, loneliness, grief.

Okay, think about you know that sentence. I shouldn't have to keep asking. What might actually be underneath that? Maybe it's I want you to notice me without me having to beg for it. Or I want to matter enough that you do remember. Or maybe it's I don't want to feel like I'm your parent. Or maybe it's I need to know that when I tell you something hurts, it matters to you. Okay, these are the things I want you guys to think about.

Now I think that one of the most important

Kari Hoskins (18:55.698)

I think that stage four, the fracture, happens to be one of the most important stages in the divorce decision. Okay, and I want to say again, it does not automatically mean that your marriage is doomed, okay? But this is definitely the stage where your heart can start closing. You stop expecting your spouse to show up, you stop risking vulnerability, you stop asking for things, and what adds insult to injury.

Is that when you start coaching or you start therapy and your spouse starts making changes, in your mind you're like, well, it's only because like it's too little no no. And stop asking for things.

And I think what's really hard is like once really the struggle for a lot of people is that when if you've been asking your spouse and now you are definitely in stage four, and then like let's say you start coaching or you start therapy and your spouse starts making changes, the problem that I see a lot is that you as the unhappier person have already started emotionally shutting down. And then that's when you get this really painful dynamic.

Where your f spouse finally seems to wake up and you're like, Yeah, I've been asking for this for like three years, or I asked you for this five years ago. And so like now it doesn't count. Okay. Okay, so what do you do at this stage? First thing is I do not want

Kari Hoskins (20:36.142)

Okay, so what do you do with this stage? I want you just to think about this stage as information. Okay. Resentment is information. So you start by asking, what keeps hurting? What has never actually been repaired? What are our open loops? Is there one big open loop in this marriage or are there lots of little ones? Okay. Is repair currently possible? Now to answer that question, I would go back and listen to episodes 49, 50, and 51, because I talk about

The three three of the things that really turning your marriage around requires. Okay. Other things to consider. Can the two of you have conversations about what happened without somebody immediately attacking, defending, minimizing, shutting down, or changing the subject? Are behaviors actually changing? Okay. And just as important, if your spouse is making meaningful, meaningful changes, are you emotionally open enough to see them? Okay.

Now that doesn't mean you have to trust them immediately, and it doesn't mean you have to like instantly forgive them. It means that you want enough awareness that you're making decisions based on what is actually happening now while still respecting what has happened in the past. And I know that's really, really hard. And that's of course where getting help working through this is really important. Okay. And this is also where your clarity really starts coming from. Okay. So

You don't have to have it all figured out in one sitting, right? what I want to do before we wrap up is I just want to leave you with a few questions that can help you start separating the hurt from the history from what is actually happening in your marriage today. And again, you don't have to answer these like all at one time while you're driving to work or you're walking the dog. Just listen for the one that makes you go, ooh, that one, that's the one I need to sit with.

So here are some questions that can start helping you identify really the source of your resentment and kind of you know get you on the road to thinking about this. Here they are. What are the issues in your marriage that keep opening back up, that keep reopening? Like not just what you fight about, but what was never truly healed in the first place? Okay. what is underneath your anger? Is it hurt, loneliness, fear, disappointment?

Kari Hoskins (23:01.816)

Grief. Okay. And then ask yourself, what story do I have about my spouse because of my resentment? And this one is huge. he doesn't care. She's selfish. He'll never change. I can't rely on her, right? And then this is really important with that question. What evidence supports that story? Okay. And then also, is there evidence that contradicts that story? That is just as important.

And here's another really big question. Where has your heart started to close? Okay, what would have to happen from your spouse, or perhaps from you, to open it just a little bit? Now you don't need to know whether or not, like today, you don't need to know whether or not you want to repair your marriage, or if you want to leave, or if you want to stay, or you want to go or whatever, right? That is not what the stage is asking you to decide. Right now.

We're trying to understand what all of the resentment is telling you before your resentment becomes the thing that is making the decision for you. Okay. And if there's one thing that I really want you to take away from this episode, it is this, okay?

Kari Hoskins (24:19.114)

If you've reached that place, okay, wait, let's start that over. And if there's one thing, let me start that over. If there's one thing that I want you to take away from this episode, you guys, it is this. If you have reached that place of, I have said this so many times, I don't want to say it again, I want you to pay attention to that. Okay. Something in your marriage has remained unresolved for long enough.

That it is changing how you experience your spouse and your marriage. And that deserves to be understood. Okay? Because in the next stage, stage five, the crossroads, the question starts becoming much more urgent. At that point, you're wondering if you want this marriage at all. Okay. So look, if you're trying to figure out where you are in this process, I really strongly encourage you to go.

Take my should we get a divorce quiz. It is on my website, kahoskins.com. You can also find it in the link in the show notes. It only takes a couple of minutes and it will help you identify which stage you may be in, and more importantly, what might need your attention next. Okay, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I'm Kari Hoskins and thank you for listening to the Divorce Decision Podcast.