Contentment

Resentment is the number one cause of death for a healthy relationship. I’ve observed, like many, relationships built on two people focusing solely on what they do for one another, that are broken down just as quickly by each person not living up to the other’s expectations. Like venom slowly making its way through the connective tissues of a couple’s bond, toxins of disappointment and disapproval slowly kill any love and appreciation they have for each other. Resentment enters the bloodstream as easily as one person doing or saying something that makes the other feel something he/she doesn’t want to feel, and bam!--- the blame game is on.

In a heated conversation about a year or so into dating my partner, Mike, I was immaturely pouty about us cancelling a romantic trip due to family obligations. My only goal in the entitled moment was to get what was mine, which was the “appropriate” number of days together that would satisfy my scorecard of solo Mike time. At the time, this was one of my main barometers for high or low resentment weathers. In those days, I had overextended myself in self-inflicted step-parenting duties and as a result, I expected Mike’s unending attention when we weren’t with the kids and a shiny trophy of my excellence to go along with it. 

Because of the work Mike has done on his wounding, he swallowed his own growing ball of resentment he wanted to hurl in my direction and adjusted himself in his seat. Calmly, he asked me to shift my perspective and focus on the positive of what we have together and the time we do get to spend just the two of us. He is my death partner, as we call it, through and through; meaning he always pushes me to grow up a little more in each interaction and continue to clean out my misconceptions and involuntary reactions that stops me from doing so in any given moment. Our differing pace early on in our courtship was already working its way through my adolescent notions of getting what I want when I want and instead learning to feel more satisfaction and gratitude for what I currently have.

Many would view our daily life solely through the lens of how much I do for him and his children, and highlight all the “should”s that are due to me as a result. I’ve gotten stuck in this mental loop time and again, and have come to learn that any interaction that comes with a “should” usually doesn’t inspire any kind of innate inspiration in the person receiving it. Mike has certainly never responded well to me telling him how things should be or how he should react to me. My disappointment was merely laying the groundwork for being discontent and further resentful, whether I realized it or not. Being disappointed doesn’t call others to be better, it belittles them into staying exactly where they are and then resenting you for keeping them there.

The ultimate gift of contentment within partnership is that it actually opens up desire in each other and permission to want to grow and change as a unit. It’s in the pushy, controlling energy of disappointment that our partners close down and no longer wish to meet our needs. Ironically, me becoming content with the time we had together increased the quality of our time and Mike’s overall desire to foster our togetherness as a romantic couple. Less pressure on him, and on the relationship, created a much more natural union, devoid of resentment and full of the kind of carefree partnership we both want.

I realized soon after that discussion that what Mike was asking of me that day was to better find regular contentment in the here and now. In the place I’m in my life now, I orient there rather easily, but I didn’t at the time. Early on, I leaned into my knowledge that he had old wounds that told him that he should protectively close his heart if he felt energetic disappointment from his partner. Wanting to be a new kind of safe, unconditional partner for him, I channeled moments of dissatisfaction into clearing out my own blocks to my innate joy and finally learn what it truly meant to live from a state of contentment, no matter the external circumstance. This meant pausing my mental judgment to slow down enough to observe what was really going on emotionally for me. There was no amount of Mike’s time that was going to satisfy my internal desires that had nothing to do with him to begin with. 

What I found underneath my discontentment was my own loss of personal power, my unwillingness to take responsibility for needing more alone time with myself or more connection with friends and family, and much needed ownership of the things I want in life that our current circumstance wasn’t offering me. I was forced to look at how often I was giving something to others because I thought I had to in order to earn their love or make others happy, only to feel worse in the exchange. 

Mike and I aren’t married but in every other essence of the word, I view Mike’s children as my stepchildren. I consider them in our plans, wonder how they’re navigating life when they aren’t with us and increasingly with each day we are together, am grateful to them for folding me into their lives so graciously and lovingly. Quickly after meeting them, we became a fairly well-gelled-four-some and I threw myself into the domestic role of the woman in the house. In many ways, I’ve been a closet housewife long before I had a house or a quasi-husband. Instead of owning how much I enjoyed and still do, creating a warm, peaceful organized home for them, I inflated my newfound role with the need to feel loved for it.

I hear myself say inwardly, and on rare occasion to Mike, how much I’ve given up for him and the kids. Each time the letters form themselves into words in my mind I can feel the load of bullshit that is forcing them out and poisoning me with each line of toxic reasoning. The resentment I feel in those moments has everything to do with my own unmet desires and my overcompensation to get them met. I’m often challenged by helping to take care of two beings that love me but will never love me the way they love their biological parents. I understand wholeheartedly why this is, and don’t blame anyone for it, yet every season or so when stepmom-hood rears her ugly head, it breaks my heart…again and again…and I ride the slippery slope right into resentment and discontentment.

After the umpteenth time I’ve emptied the dishwasher with everyone else’s dishes and watched as the kids hug Mike with a certain energetic that they’ll never hug me with, or lay next to Mike’s youngest son as he fights against his tiredness before bed, the little seed of desire for all this to truly be my own awakens a little bit more. Deep down, I want my own child; one that will look at me with the same face of undying love and hormonal annoyance that most children look at their parents with. I want my blood running through another human’s veins who I share some facial resemblance with. I want her (wink wink!) to feel within the heartbeat of her chest that she’s got me and through the divine tapestry of universal magic, we’ll always be connected and always have been. It has been a journey of self-acceptance; to let myself feel this desire more fully without knowing if or how it will be met.

When I don’t let it be there and make it about how no one understands the plight of being a child-less stepmom, my heart hardens around my own longings before they ever really have the opportunity to be felt. I know, from decades of self-development, that not everything I desire must met, and I’ve come to experience longing not as a reason for dissatisfaction but rather a vital part of the human experience. When I forget this and imagine that I’ll always be second fiddle—to Mike’s life before me, to the kids and their needs, to Mike’s desires for parental freedom— the slide into full-body, mental prison resentment emerges in seconds beckoning me on the crazy train.

The resentment in those moments moves into every corner of gratitude I have for my life, any contentment I’ve cultivated with the present circumstances of it, and whatever passion I have for being the main character in my own life story. When I’m in the hurricane of resentment, I can’t see the way out or ride the storm with any kind of grace that I’m used to relating from. I’m lost to the stories of injustice; hell bent on taking back the power in my life, that the victim in me has so seemingly lost to another. Yet, when I can come up for air back into reality, I’m reminded of how many aspects of my relationship with Mike fill me deeply with satisfaction. I re-orient myself towards gratitude for the small moments. Sometimes I smile internally when we’re lying next to one another at night holding hands and feel the immense love in my heart that I have for the rarity of our union. I’m reminded of the extraordinary circumstance that it is to know someone else with such depth and be able to share wholeheartedly in that depth with one another. 

I’m learning that beyond any external measure of success and ambition, contentment is my holy grail of achievement. Now a game of state change, rather than of destination, my practice is to bring contentment with me to the hard parts of life, and watch as they soften them into places of gratitude and spaciousness. When in this state, life is a beautiful exploration. I enjoy experiences, little and big and am genuinely excited about how life is unfolding. It’s an extraordinary feeling of having nowhere to go and everywhere all at the same time, and not needing any particular thing to happen on any particular timeline. Even when met with experiences and feelings I’d rather not have; contentment always smooths out the currents of my sometimes-volatile emotional state until I’m home again in a state of natural inner peace.

I haven’t given up on any of my soul’s desires. Just the contrary, in fact. The more I let myself feel them, resentment has no home in my heart. I watch the kids play and laugh and make a mess, and the little tug of aloneness that comes with imagining that I’ll always be less important than the other blood relationships in Mike’s life and the longing that I feel deep down to experience the same kind of biological parent-child relationship ceases into contentment for the now we all have together, and our possibilities for the future. I create space for the unfolding while thoroughly enjoying the present day of our relationship right now; not based on how I think it should be different or what others think it should look like in order for me to be happy.

As Mike and I continue to bond in our contentment, the door to greater intimacy opens up wider and wider for us to have the challenging conversations about what keeps our relationship in such as state for both of us, without resentment as our guide. Discussed and re-imagined through the lens of contentment rather than through the lens of disappointment and pressure, a world of possibility opens up for us in our decision making made through a content union. 

Any time I have the inclination to share from a place of resentment, I attempt to squash the conversation before it has the chance to light itself on fire. We’ve never made headway helping each other towards our dreams by telling the other all the ways we disappoint. It has always been and can only be through showering the other with all the ways they satisfy an inner contentment made more possible with each other by our side.