To start, resentment is a complex emotion rooted in anger and typically involves feeling slighted in some way. In my clinical experience, because of a sense of being slighted, mistreated, or wronged, many people direct their resentment toward someone else and focus on that person and the mistreatment. And since I am a sex and couples therapist, in my office, someone else is typically their partner.

The resentment-having partner typically copes with that resentment in a variety of ways, from passive-aggressive communication to withdrawal to shutting down emotionally. (Notice I did not say they talk to their partner about it.) None of these are effective long-term strategies, but most people say they do not know another way to manage their resentment. And between the feeling of resentment and those strategies, that person’s interest in and desire for sex with their partner inevitably decreases.

Meanwhile, their partner is confused.

“Why are we having less or no sex? I initiate sex, I ask for sex, I make overtures, and my partner says no.”

I will admit that it is rare for this partner to ask themselves what is wrong with *the relationship*. Typically, this partner, because they are hurt and feeling rejected sexually, will start saying something is wrong with the other partner. Their own resentment might also start to build. This can, and frequently does, literally go on for years. And resentment is usually a factor in the low-sex and no-sex couples that I see in my practice.

There is a very intriguing process that unfolds once we identify that a partner has resentment. After identifying what the resentment is about and why, many people will pursue an apology. Many couples therapists may even promote this strategy. After all, learning to apologize with sincerity is an important relationship skill to develop and practice…and one you will use repeatedly.

However, once a sincere apology has been offered (and, in some cases, it may need to be repeated), it may become clear that the apology was insufficient for the person still experiencing resentment. So many couples, and their inexperienced couples therapists, typically go on a journey of figuring out how else to soothe the pain and/or resentment that lingers in the partner.

But this often creates a dynamic in which the partner who did the wrong thing acts in a performative manner. “Will this soothe you? Or this? How about this?” And that partner can often complain that “What I’m doing is never enough.”

To get out of this dynamic, we need to turn to the partner who is experiencing the resentment and explore it further (if we haven’t already). What many people do not like to hear is that resentment is often a two-way street. Meaning, the person feeling the resentment had a part to play in the development of their resentment.

Let me be clear: I am not victim-blaming. Most victims of abuse do not feel resentment towards their abuser. But in everyday, run-of-the-mill intimate partnership dynamics, the partner who feels resentment has also contributed to it.

As I tell my clients, yes, one partner committed an act of wrongdoing, and we need to, and will, address it. That partner needs to understand why it was mistreatment, their impact on the other partner, apologize sincerely, and learn from the experience. But in my experience, resentment also involves the person on the receiving end of that slight or wrong not speaking up and saying what their experience is or how that behavior hurt them.

Look, I know we make sacrifices all the time in relationships. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do. What is problematic is when you are in a relationship of equals with another adult, you make a sacrifice and do not say anything to that person about it.

Most people sacrifice for a good-to-them reason: because I want to make you happy, to keep the peace, because I am afraid of conflict or a confrontation, or because, in this situation, what you want seems more important to you than how important what I want is to me. These are just a few that I have heard.

Where it becomes a problem, and more importantly, when it will lead to resentment, is if you sacrifice over and over without sharing your reason or experience with your partner. This is exactly the formula for creating resentment, and this is what I am referring to when I say resentment involves actions—or in this case, inactions—by the resentment holder. (And by the way, never weaponize your sacrifice.)

Because we know what will happen if someone repeatedly stuffs this material. It can fester inside the person; it can come out either in an outsized way over something else, or it can come out in an argument as part of a long list of historical slights and wrongdoings.

When I wrote earlier that resentment is one of the biggest emotions we can learn from, I meant this. By looking at this pattern, we can see that one partner is not speaking up but stuffing it, the other partner has no idea they hurt or upset their partner in the way they did. It turns the couple’s repair work into encouraging one partner to speak up regularly and the other to listen to their partner with curiosity and respect.

Circling back to how resentment negatively affects a couple’s sexual relationship, I have written before about how in long-term, committed relationships, the emotional landscape is entirely different than the emotional landscape of a short-term, less committed relationship. Many people understandably struggle with how to reconcile their resentment towards their partner with their sexuality. With improved self-awareness and communication, many couples can move through the resentment, and this can foster feelings of closeness and trust, two things crucial for an erotic connection. Hopefully, by reading this, you have learned a strategy or two to resolve it.

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