Relationship Tips to End Resentment

Resentment can cause relationship issues that lead to breakups, fights, divorce, and hard feelings. When resentment begins to build, couples can find it difficult to navigate and find their way back to a healthy middle ground. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano gets candid about her struggles with resentment and how she managed to overcome her mind's propensity to do the thing it did to protect her from having to expose her vulnerabilities. Lisa eventually learned to master her thoughts, beliefs, emotions and intentions so well, that she is now in a loving committed relationship with her husband that is void of unnecessary resentment.

Transcript

Welcome to the breakdown to breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the breakdown to breakthrough podcast.

So when we think about resentment,

We often tie it to something or someone outside of ourselves.

Think about it.

When have you been resentful?

Maybe you've heard yourself say,

I really resent her,

Or I really resent him,

Or I really resent that organization,

Or I really resent this person or that person.

You get my drift.

So when we become consciously aware that we are resentful,

Oftentimes we don't realize that we've attached the resentment to something that's happened outside of ourselves.

And I believe that it's much deeper than that.

And it's a good thing that it's much deeper than that because it means that we actually have some control over it.

When I was first married,

In my first marriage,

I was highly codependent.

I was not taking care of myself.

I was highly agreeable,

At least on the outside,

And I very much looked to make everybody else happy.

So in a family system,

I was the person that was attuning myself to the needs of everyone else.

And so I was last on the list.

I would go to bed exhausted.

I would wake up exhausted.

And my mind was run by some automated process that I eventually learned sounded like,

You don't matter.

Other people are more important than you.

Your job is to make everybody else happy.

If you don't make everybody else happy,

You're going to lose control.

The way to live your life is to make sure that everyone else's needs are met.

Never talk about your needs.

Keep them close to your chest.

Never show your true self.

So if you're suffering,

That's a bad thing,

And no one should ever know that you're suffering.

So here I was acting out codependency,

Which is really rooted in abandonment trauma,

Which is rooted in attachment issues,

But I didn't know it.

I didn't know that my subconscious mind had been programmed and wired according to external experiences that were hijacking my ability to even be conscious about the way that I was showing up in my life.

When I remarried my husband,

Anthony,

Well,

Not that I remarried the same person.

I married Anthony,

Who was a completely different man.

I realized that there is no resentment in my relationship with him,

Where in contrast,

I was full of resentment for my ex-husband.

It's easy to say that it's the other person's fault that you are resentful.

And that's legitimate in some cases where someone is pushing your boundaries and taking advantage of you,

Ignoring you,

Devaluing you.

I mean,

That happens in relationships.

One of the worst things that someone can do in a relationship is stonewall their partner and break down communication to the point where there is no opportunity to mend this,

The divide.

And that was definitely happening in my first marriage.

But here's the key.

The key was that I didn't have enough awareness or enough .

.

.

I didn't know how to be responsible enough for my emotions.

I didn't know how to honor my emotions.

I was very dissociated from my body.

So I wasn't even in attunement with my body where I was paying attention to red flags.

I was ignoring them.

And I was very cerebral about relationships,

Thinking,

Oh,

I need to do this and I need to do that.

And I was living my life through these false limiting conditions.

And I wasn't connected with what was really right for me.

And I wasn't even connected with what was wrong with me.

And that's why my body began to fail.

What I was aware of was the deep seated resentment that I had for this person.

And what I was not aware of was how often I tried to change him and how often I tried to change myself for the purpose of changing him.

And all this did was build more and more resentment over time.

I eventually awakened,

Thank goodness.

I had a spiritual and emotional awakening.

And that was just the beginning.

Because for instance,

You can know you have cancer,

But that doesn't mean that you're going to eat better.

That doesn't mean that you're going to go get treatment.

That doesn't mean that you're actually going to schedule the surgery and follow through with the surgery.

So knowing you have a problem isn't the same as healing or correcting the problem.

And it's not even the same as getting to the core of the problem.

But when I had this awakening moment,

It literally was a shattered paradigm moment where I realized it's not me.

It's my programming.

And my parents conditioned me through their own subconscious conditioning,

Through the way that they raised me to think a certain way.

And I was done with it.

Because I could see the natural karmic effect that that was having in the way that I was parenting my children.

And once I saw that,

I was done.

I'm not doing this anymore.

I have to awaken.

So I was diagnosed as being the adult child,

An adult child of alcoholics,

The grandchild of alcoholics.

I was very curious about what the hell that meant.

And that began my journey towards mental wellness,

Spiritual wellness,

Vibrational wellness and physical health.

It really was a period of rapid transformation.

And it all started with that moment of awakening.

However,

It was the diligence,

It was the patience,

It was the self-discipline,

It was the tenacity of never giving up.

Because as you start to heal,

You find another rabbit hole.

As soon as you heal one layer,

There's another layer that has to be healed.

And I finally stopped seeing that in an immature way,

And I embraced it.

And I thought,

Okay,

What's behind this door now?

How higher can my consciousness fly?

How much more light can I have come into my system?

How much better can I feel?

How much more logical and rational and emotionally intelligent can I become for the purpose of not only shifting my consciousness,

But shifting the consciousness of my children,

Maybe the consciousness of my clients,

Maybe those who follow me on social media?

How can I become part of this larger picture where the true revolution is a revolution of consciousness?

And when enough people wake up,

Then there's a shift in consciousness at the collective level,

Which is super exciting to know that you're doing that work and you're alive,

And that's part of the legacy,

The vibrational legacy,

Or the legacy of consciousness that you want to leave behind,

Which is such a beautiful thing.

When I awakened and I was in my second marriage,

I began to realize that if I don't want to resent my husband,

I have to be authentic.

I have to tell the truth.

I have to say,

I want to do this or I don't want to do that.

If there is something that's happening between the two of us,

I have to have responsibility for this self and I have to be honest with how I'm feeling.

If things are going on in our life with the kids that I feel we are way too involved with,

Then it's up to me to say so.

If we're spending too much money in this area of our life,

It's up to me to say so.

If we're not spending enough money in this area of our life,

Or we're not paying enough attention to this area of our life,

It's up to me to say so.

If I am being pulled in 10 different directions,

Because that's very easy for a codependent person to do,

Is to be pulled in 10,

000 different directions and to feel like it really is up to you to keep all these plates spinning in the air and you collapse at the end of the night exhausted and you don't even know that you exist anymore because you have become an extension of other people's lives.

And then that is not their fault because that's the way you present in their life.

And so of course,

You're the person that they lean on.

You're the person that they think is going to solve all their problems.

But what ends up happening is this emotional collapse of someone who lives their life that way,

Not setting boundaries,

Not honoring the self.

And it could end up with a physical collapse,

A mental collapse.

It could end up in depression and very bad things happen to someone who is not honoring the self.

And so because I don't want to resent my husband,

I know it's my responsibility to be honest.

I know it's my responsibility to self-care.

I know that if I want to take a shower to start my day and he wants to take a walk and me wanting to take a walk with him is really me not wanting to disappoint him and me trying to control how he feels and me not being able to advocate,

Well,

You know what,

Babe,

I'd like to take a walk,

But my day is going to go a lot more smoothly if I take a shower now.

And it's not a life of me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me.

It's a life of conscious compromise where today I know that I have to start my day early and that's really important to me.

Otherwise I'm going to be a mess at the end of the day and I will resent you.

So when we're not honoring the self,

We have the potential to end up resenting other people.

And because the mind is primarily subconscious,

What will happen is our egoic mind will start to justify and rationalize the anger that we feel.

And rather than us acknowledge,

Wait a minute,

I'm angry because I dishonored myself at the start of my day and I dishonored myself yesterday and the day before and last year and I've always dishonored myself.

I've always lived for other people.

I haven't lived for myself and that's why I'm so full of resentment.

We don't usually do that because that's not a natural process of the mind.

The natural process is subconsciousness.

The natural process is the egoic mind justifying and rationalizing everything that we feel.

So to protect us from this sense of vulnerability,

The goal of spiritual healing,

Emotional healing,

And mental wellness is to withstand this level of vulnerability where we can take the hit,

Where we can be honest with other people in spite of them possibly leaving us.

We can be honest with other people in spite of that person being uncomfortable with us.

We can see that wobbly experience as all part of our emotional growth journey.

So if you don't want to be someone who resents other people,

That's amazing.

That tells me that you're a spiritually minded person.

You're a morally minded person.

You're thinking about other people.

You have empathy.

You care how you show up in the world,

Which is everything because we are in this together.

If we're going to be able to survive as a society of people,

Then it makes sense that we just realize that we really do need one another.

And from that perspective,

Hating one another,

Fighting with one another,

Finding fault in one another doesn't make rational sense.

So part of my healing journey is making sure that I am not digesting information that is causing me to dislike another person based on someone else's cognitive bias,

Based on some media resource or media outlets' cognitive bias.

Because cognitive bias is not rational.

Cognitive bias is I'm right and everybody else is wrong.

And my brain then,

By default,

Will filter out conflicting data.

So in an argument with a family member,

Once they call you a name or once they perceive you in a negative way,

Dear one,

Shutty shutty.

Because the moment you start to defend yourself,

That rational perspective or that varying perception is going to be thrown out with the baby,

With the bath water.

It's just going to be pushed away.

Because when someone has a cognitive bias of you,

Their brain,

By default,

Filters out conflicting data.

When I see two people arguing,

I think to myself,

This just doesn't make any sense because neither person can hear what the other person is saying.

So save your breath and save your time when you're dealing with people who judge you and you know that it's a faulty perception of you.

Let them have it.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

Move on.

And as far as being someone who wants to live their life with integrity,

With peace of mind and contentment,

So you can enjoy this life before you transition out of it,

Then becoming accountable for your level of resentment is key.

And so I personally don't want to resent my husband.

I want to love him.

I want him to know I appreciate him.

And that starts with me taking responsibility for me,

My wellness,

My self-care,

And setting boundaries so that I don't end up in an immature way resenting him for something that was never his responsibility to take care of in the first place.

I have to take care of me.

And when I step into that ownership,

When I do it with love,

When I do it with integrity,

When I do it with vulnerability,

My life works and my relationships work too.

I hope this has been helpful.

Namaste,

Everybody.

Until next time.

Bye.

Reviews

Love this! “I have the right to say so.” I learn from the same experience as u too, Lisa. And the second marriage is so so different because we honour each other. Thank u!

WOW…that was just what I needed today ! I am so much the person who wants wants to do for others but in one relationship with a family member I feel so invisible and unappreciated and ignored. Thanks for your insight, found it very helpful and I will listen often and take your advice. This really hit home for me! Thank you again and again ❣️

Fantastic- you put all my thoughts into words

Simple yet very enlightening

That was a very nice meditation

Insightful, thanks

OMG! Spot on, but how do I find the line between self care and co-dependency?

i’m glad i listened to the whole thing. there were some good tidbits 🙏🙏🙏