In contrast to
my feeling sad or joyful—which I can experience in solitude—my being resentful
is specifically related to another person’s behaviour. In coming to resent
you, I am already "horizontally" present to myself as someone I must not
be,and how you are behaving is threatening to illuminate that unacceptable
possibility. In other words,
you
must
be the person I would have you be if I am
to keep from being the unacceptable person I must
not be.
In my coming to
resent you, I’ve construed a "contract" with you regarding how you are
to be with me; but I’ve done so without your participation, so it’s unlikely
that you actually know what I expect from you.
I resent you when
you don’t act as I expect (or, conversely, when you do what I expect you
not
to do)—when I believe you aren’t keeping your contract with me. For example:
You’re visiting me for a couple of weeks. I think it’s only right for you
to help me out in return for my hospitality—perhaps by making your bed,
helping with my kids or washing the dishes after dinner—but you don’t offer
to help. I find you to be at fault for this: In my view you should
already know who I would have you be and, in failing to comply, it must
be you who is at fault, who is uncooperative, rather than me.
I presume from
your actions that you’re
unwilling
to cooperate with me, unwilling
to share my world even though it seems evident to me that you could and
should. In the face of this seeming intrusion and lack of reciprocity,
I see you as cutting me down and cutting me off from you. You seem to be
rejecting, condemning, dismissing me and my world. I conclude that you
don’t care about me and that you’re wilfully imposing aspects of your world
on mine, with no concern about the discomfort that this imposition might
be causing me.
Although I need
something from you, in the face of your seemingly uncaring behaviour and
my belief that you’re
choosing to behave this way, I feel helpless
and powerless to resist your imposition. So even though you seem to be
victimising me and placing me in an untenable position, I shrink from telling
you what I expect and from asking for what I need—in other words, from
acting assertively to ease my situation. I’m afraid that were I to do so,
I would be exposing myself to you as the unloveable person (perhaps needy,
hurt or
scared) I believe I am and yet must not be.
As the situation
unfolds, I continue to believe that asking you for what I want will reveal
that I am the person I mustnot be. So even though
I recognise my discomfort with your intrusion, the possibility of my asking
for your cooperation keeps presenting itself to me as something unspeakable,
as something to be avoided at all costs, and I continue to avoid making
my desire explicit to you.
I thus maintain
a "vacillating" stance in my struggle to maintain a sense that I am worth
loving. But this renders me unable to engage in the dialogue that will
resolve my conflict.
Resenting is a
unique and specific disruption of my world. To the extent that I believe
I stand to lose what I already possess (in this case, the status of someone
loveable, acceptable), it is a mode of being afraid. To the extent
that I believe I stand to lose a futureto which I have committed
myself (one in which I have succeeded in keeping you from finding out that
I am unacceptable), it is a mode of being anxious.
I will continue
to resent you until I accept who I might be for you by asking for what
I want, expressing my resentment, or genuinely accepting that this is simply
your way.