In this episode, Chris and Cortney talk about one of the silent and most harmful feeling that appears in a marriage or any relationship. This show is all about resentment.
To address this, you must know what resentment are and what causes it to appear in a relationship. As they start to appear, you can see all the ways that the marriage is affected by these feelings, so you must learn to cope with them if you want the relationship to continue.
While resentments are normal to appear in any person, we must take to time to look at the how we can prevent those feelings from becoming chronic and toxic in a relationship.
Tune in to see Resentments in Marriage Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- We got some great feedback from a listener about Education in Episode 180.
- What are resentments?
- Resentments hurt the person harboring it, not the one they are directed towards.
- Humility is the antidote to harboring resentment.
- Good Therapy points out that resentment is the result of inadequately expressed emotion after a painful event or experience.
- Now that we know what resentment is, they talk about what resentment creates.
- Resentment becomes devastating when it becomes a chronic reality of experience.
- Resentments are normal and we usually handle them internally.
- How can you cope with resentments and how to resolve them.
- To go deeper on letting go, listen to Episode 94.
- Finally, how can you prevent resentments in the first place.
- Apology/Forgiveness cycles are invaluable in relationships.
- For marriage you need to develop expectations the right way and you can listen to Episode 102 on how you can do that.
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Episode #181 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, there I am. Chris Gazdik in mental health and substance abuse therapist. You have found Through a Therapist’s Eyes where we offer a perspective of a therapist been doing this since 1995 in a personal time in your car and or your home or on Spotify, apple, iTunes, all those good places. We endeavor to see the world through the lens of this therapist, but being aware, Cortney, as you know, it’s not the delivery of therapy services in any way, right?
Not any way. Anyway five star reviews definitely help us out a lot. Given the apple iTunes gives a ability to give us a review. That really is very important. It helps us out a lot. I really appreciate you guys hanging with us. We’re at like episode, holy cow, 180 1. We’re above 180. That’s amazing.
It’s crazy. Contact@throughatherapistseyes is the website. We got merchandise out there now. That’s pretty cool. Neil. I saw the jigsaw puzzle. I think I’m going to buy the jigsaw puzzle. I got to get the jigsaw puzzle. That looks pretty neat. [00:01:00] He’s grabbing the mic. I’d pulled him in. That’s cool. Cause there’s
Neil Robinson: actually different sizes so you can have different counts.
So if you want to get it more for kids or younger people, you got to be hard. You can get small ones. And I actually had to make the graphic different sizes because the, the number of pieces dictates how big it was. I made, I made it and like, I’m kind off like all the outside crap. So I had to fix the graphics up.
So yeah, so I think it was up to 500 or a thousand pieces thousand pieces. I don’t remember the exact number, but it can get pretty high. So you want a challenge to get your, get your buddies together. Most challenging thing
Chris Gazdik: on this through a therapist as jigsaw puzzle, Cortney is my handwriting is actually on the top.
Tough to puzzle together, but it says let’s figure this out together. So that’s pretty cool. Neil, I appreciate you kind of organizing those things. We’re going to get some quotes out there on the merchandise. That’s pretty cool. So t-shirts are going to be coming. I don’t know what timeframe we’re locking into that.
It shouldn’t take us too much too difficult to get those organized and put in there, but kind of excited about that. I [00:02:00] think you’re going to enjoy those. This is the human experience, the human emotional experience. Cortney, what do you think we should do? You mean, like right now, like the phrase I was
setting you up for the phrase, let’s figure this thing
out together.
I’m so sorry. We are cracked spotted. And I don’t know what’s up with us to see just me, just me. It’s just me. We do have a little bit of announcement though. Sad to say Courtney is one of the co-hosts that we have, and you have made the decision for purposes of self care, energy bandwidth. You’re exploding with your business.
I understand. So you have an announcement of this will be the, your last episode, I believe,
Cortney Donelson: right? Yes, that’s correct. But I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I think this is, I think ninth time I’ve done this. Yeah. So it’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed it. I [00:03:00] hope everyone else has too, but my capacity is limited. So I had to make some tough choices and say yes to really, or say no to really good things.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And I appreciate that. And I’ll say on the show, I really appreciate what you’ve been doing. Really enjoyed working with you. I’m not going to stop working with you, so we’ll stay in touch and stuff. But this is the last time that you’re going to be able to get her contact information. So it’s, you know, really, you got to jot it down.
I think sometimes people are like, oh, I’ll get it next time or whatever. So they’re very well, although I may work on her, y’all there very well may not be a next time. So how can they find you with both of them editing services,
Cortney Donelson: all that stuff. Yes. Editing and ghostwriting. Is that your vote? some.com and it’s Y O U R V O C E m.com.
Chris Gazdik: She’s had some referrals. She can help you all around the world, actually with your novels and blogs and editing. And I just love her ghost writing ability. She doesn’t know this yet, but I might take her up on the ghost writing issue [00:04:00] for in, in this time to come. Just it’ll, it’ll be it’s in development, but we’re going to start off with a revisiting of last episodes comment.
So we do use comments. We do answer questions on the air when cool things come up and I was just enthralled with last week, we talked about the education, mental health and the education system, and we were nervous about it. Very nervous about it. Yeah. Cause say, why w what do you mean?
Cortney Donelson: Yeah, I mean, there’s just, it’s a hot button topic.
It’s a big topic to tackle and I think. Wanting it to, to come across well, to all parties involved.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And I think it did. Yeah. I listened to it. We got great feedback from it. So I think we, we tackled a really tough issue about education in, in, in mental health and all the factors that go into education.
So do you remember when I said like, I am like sick of this, you remember that? Okay. So this, this, what I want to [00:05:00] read is a response that we got on Facebook. I’m going to protect your identity and just say, this is from a Mrs. C. Cause it didn’t get permission, but it’s on public forums. So I feel comfortable reading it because it was so a proposed on point.
And like I swear, she was like in my head, when I said at my whole adult life, I’ve been hearing education reform, education reform. I’m just sick of hearing that it it’s, it’s so frustrating to me as a parent and as a person. So I wanted to read what she said, cause I thought she was absolutely completely on-point.
So she says learning in a controlled teaching system, brimming with testing quotas scores, obtaining funding is so far from teaching. We should all understand the frustration and fear of parents and concerned adults in the community that children can be bypassed, be relegated to a life that will not show them the thrill of learning that will not impart the lifelong curiosity to never stop learning.
And to always question in order to recognize truth and fact students need the tools to learn now and through their entire life. It [00:06:00] seems stifling to me, into the teachers and administrators who must follow the dictates of non teachers or politicians. I enjoyed the show in the lively comments. Good parents worry so much and rightfully so.
Be involved, stay involved, let your voices be heard.
Cortney Donelson: That’s perfect. That’s the summary, right?
Chris Gazdik: It is exactly why I said I am sick of it, you know, and, and I appreciate your comments and, and the back and forth. It’s always nice to have that, but I, you know, there’s, there’s times when people say things just better than I could ever have thought of saying it.
And that was, that was it. It’s, it’s so frustrating to see, you know, and I think we were talking about, you know, before the Mics came on, kids lose the passion for learning, and that’s the most. You know, that’s the most harmful
Cortney Donelson: tragedy it’s tragic.
Chris Gazdik: It really is
Cortney Donelson: tragic. Thank you, Mrs.
Chris Gazdik: C. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
[00:07:00] So today we’re going to be talking about marriage. I figured we had to do a marriage show, go a little way with Cortney, because you know, you were on our show before talking about marriage. I know it’s an issue that is near and dear to your heart. And this is a particular component of marriage that, that I thought gets a lot of traction in misunderstood, like resentments in marriage.
Like how do people see resentments in marriage is not good, right? Like people get freaked out about this upset about this. It causes so much strife. People worry about it. You know, they feel alone with.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of bitterness, unresolved bitterness.
Chris Gazdik: Is that? Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good word combo, by the way, I’m getting over allergies.
I’m feeling a little bit like your radio voice. Is it my radio voice yet? I feel better today. I felt all week and I felt like I sounded great until you came and you’re like, oh, you’re nasally today. I’m like, oh geez. I thought it was [00:08:00] over this, but that’s what’s going on. So as usually like start off with like, what are resentments?
So let’s, let’s kind of go through and identify, you know, what do we really mean with this? Because I think. Hit it really nicely on the head there with a bitterness lot, lots of chronic bitterness can be the case when people get into the states of resentment, which is different than a resentment, it occurs to me having a state of resentment versus, you know, getting resentments, resentments are going to happen and we resolve them.
Right. But the bitterness comes in when it becomes any level of chronicity. So what is a resentment you want to read
or just, what is it?
Cortney Donelson: Is this according to Webster or someone, some dictionary anger and indignation or annoyance experienced as part of what is real or perceived unfair treatment.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. [00:09:00] And you know, we’re going to do a segment, I guess, in a little while. Are they normal? You know, it occurs to me that one of the things I really want to accomplish is to.
Help us understand that you’re going to get sideways in marriage. Everyone always like says that it’s so readily easily pat thing to say, you have ups and downs and he goes sideways and that’s normal and all, but, you know, I don’t think people really understand the daily ins and outs of how that works.
You know, you know what I’m trying to say there
Cortney Donelson: I do. Yeah. I think daily in marriage expectations are missed or unmet if not daily, weekly. And if those aren’t resolved, they can turn into a long-term situation and conflict.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And I guess to, yeah, to add to that, like, people feel like they’re doing something wrong.
If they, if they have a resentment or we’re [00:10:00] doomed because we had these resentments You know, these, these end games of like disastrous results or imagined because you have something that happens. Normally
Cortney Donelson: it’s always hope. We just said that. Right? We
Neil Robinson: did. We didn’t
Chris Gazdik: say that that was about basketball.
No, that’s intense thing in our state of North Carolina, duke and North Carolina playing in the final four, but we do digress. I love the way that they talk about resentments in AA. D do you know much about the AA program?
Cortney Donelson: I know about the 12 step programs, probably more specifically to S a SSA
Chris Gazdik: section, sex addicts anonymous.
Yeah. And there’s alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous, and all the anonymous assays that are out there. I think they do a really good job of talking about. In recovery, how to manage resentments because in the phrase that I learned through learning the program is that resentment hurt [00:11:00] the person, harboring the resentment, not the person that’s resented.
Right. And I have totally found that to be true. Have you heard that before? Yeah. I’ve
Cortney Donelson: heard it in the context and it’s similar for unforgiveness, right. Which is, I guess you can kind of package yeah. Is as an unresolved or is that as an, a resentment you’re spreading to me, I can’t talk
Chris Gazdik: great for an audio show.
I’m spitting up words and it spit over to her and now we both can’t talk. Yeah. They, they do, they hurt the person who’s holding the resentment and that is an unforgiven state, you know? So you’ve heard that before in a different context. Can, can w what does that mean to you? I’m curious, like, It’s a tough thing to really rebel.
Cortney Donelson: I think it’s absolutely true. However, I also think that harboring resentment it hurts the relationship too well. Yeah. But yeah, it it’s, it’s a personal thing and we might talk about this later, but I see it as [00:12:00] a choice to Harbor
Chris Gazdik: resentment. Okay. Definition, section characteristic. It’s a choice.
Hm. Which mean,
Cortney Donelson: I don’t mean the daily resentment you’re talking about that’s normal. I mean the longterm resentment bitterness that never goes away.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Well never’s a long, never, but that stays chronic chronic. So let me push back at that a little bit. What, what about. I mean, I, I definitely can see some choices that go in there for sure, but I think there’s a lot of times we get into a state of mind and we really don’t know that we’re in a state of mind.
So is there a component that can be a part of resentments in understanding what they are? You know, there there’s times where you can be upset about something, feel cringy about something, feel anxious about something helpless about something means a lot of angles that you can come at falling into a little bit of a trap [00:13:00] of holding and harboring a resentment versus a choice where you’re active in saying, I want to hold this.
Cortney Donelson: So I think that’s a great point. I think you have to understand what you’re holding in order to release it. Right. So I definitely, yeah, I see that perspective. I’m coming at it from, so if people don’t know my marriage story 13 years into our marriage, my husband disclosed and we discovered that he was addicted to pornography and had a sex addiction that had led to multiple affairs.
So we have episodes of that podcast. I don’t know what numbers they
Chris Gazdik: are. Mia, would you look that up real quick? He’s already on it too, so we can quote that. But, and, and
Cortney Donelson: we’re past that he’s sober. He has been for over a decade and we are doing well. And part of that, part of the reason for that, my part of that is that I made a conscious choice not to Harbor that bitterness and resentment, right.
The hurt that I experienced. And it was a [00:14:00] very conscious choice because the marriage we were fighting for was a healthy, good marriage. And I knew that if I harbored that resentment and bitterness and kept focused on me and my pain and what he did to me, quote unquote, right. That, that marriage we were striving for would never happen
Chris Gazdik: well, you know, and that’s, that’s one thing that came across my thoughts and, and looking at this issue, the idea that sometimes I think we’re going to do a segment on, can you identify.
That you actually have resentment. Cause I, I submit that a lot of hundred people don’t even know it. It’s a little easier when something blows up and then you have a clear choice. I’m going to hold this against you, or I’m going to go through and let go of that. There, there definitely lies in choice when there’s clarity.
And, and, but, but realizing that you’re keeping track of stuff, realizing that you’re keeping score, realizing [00:15:00] that you’re, you’re monitoring the other person or putting emotional tests out at a person and then not even a gaming right. Then that can be from a resentment. That you don’t even know you have that you’re engaging in this type of stuff.
Does that make sense? What episode? We’ve got our new,
Neil Robinson: Episode 95 as with Cortney. And so it’s a great episode and tune into it if you want help with your marriage, because it was, it was really
Chris Gazdik: good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You, you got more thoughts there about that? What do you mean? It was really good. I’m thinking if you remember that
Neil Robinson: such a great episode, because you got both sides of the, both sides of the situation.
And like Cortney said, it really does. It goes back to when something like that happens on one side, it takes both, it takes both to heal and recover from it. So, and I do want to point out one thing just because it struck me why a lot of your marriage was really good and you notice this one thing was going to cause a problem.
And I think a lot of people at that one problem. Ruin the rest of the good. And so I’m glad you said that because I think that’s, I think a lot of [00:16:00] people will do that where they just, that one thing, that one small thing is that it fixing it, they let the whole thing
Chris Gazdik: collapse. So, right. No, that’s an excellent point.
Thank you for that, Neil. I mean, it, it is, it there’s a lot there that can happen in the course of a lifetime together and you probably will come across something. It might be an affair. It might be a workaholism. Yeah. A business that somebody devotes their all their time to it. So many things, you know, have a physical injury that is a chronic now medical condition that you didn’t bank on.
I mean, there’s, there’s some pretty big things that can happen in your life that are going to affect your relationship. And here’s a perfect time for a quote. I developed a quote during the. Show prep. Yeah. Humility is the antidote to harboring or resentment.
Cortney Donelson: I love that. I think that’s spot on. I think it takes looking at [00:17:00] yourself and why you’re feeling, what you’re feeling and understanding that there are two people involved.
And if you make it all about you, that’s going to allow that resentment to fester.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. It’s funny, man. You know, you just wronged me and now I’m supposed to think about my contribution to this problem,
you know? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a big, difficult thing to do, but it’s a real thing. And guys, I’m talking to somebody who lived an incredible life journey through a very large example of that. And, and I know we just talked about it. I mean, I know your hearts, you know, on that and gets that.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. Well, another reason I love this is I think the humility piece gets to the point of, you know, not taking it personally taking things
Chris Gazdik: personally.
Oh yeah. We, boy, we should [00:18:00] probably camp out there. We’re going to have to do a part two. You got to come back next week though. I told you I’m going to work on her. Y’all no seriously, because say what you said again, there I
Cortney Donelson: S
I liked the humility aspect of your quote because I think a lot of resentment.
Created when we take things personally, whereas the offense probably had nothing to do with
Chris Gazdik: us. Yeah. That is a huge, huge marriage skill. I wish I could say are good at it. I am not good at it.
Cortney Donelson: I had to learn it or die.
Chris Gazdik: She says that with a laugh. So yeah, blood, sweat, and tears, I would imagine is the truth there because you know, the, the ability to not take things personally in your marriage, Is so hard, but so valuable.
Like we could do a whole show on that and need to [00:19:00] do a whole show on that, because that is a huge skill, a huge Chad, I’m going to change the word challenge. That is a challenge to not take things personally, even when they’re saying something or doing something to you.
Right. But I’m telling you if you can
just pause and camp out there in your brain and, and think about how you can work on challenging yourself internally with that, your marriage is going to be a whole lot better.
That’s a guarantee. I’ll give a guarantee there. So the humility thing, I love Dave Ramsey, you know, your know Ramsey and how your response. I love his response. You know, how are you today, Dave? And he says, I’m better than I deserve. You know, whether he lives that I don’t know, Dave, I hope he does, but it’s a great response.
At least it, because it’s a reminder of our own fallacies, our own failures or own trouble spots and our [00:20:00] own humility to, to mark that and to keep that in a mindset. And then, you know, I’m saying that, you know, back with AA members, I mean, I don’t know if you know many people in recovery, they were the most humble people you can find.
I’ve said that thousands of times I can attest because they’ve been to hell and back, they’ve lived. On the street. And I don’t mean that as a metaphor in a lot of instances and they’re back there save they’re well, you know, so if you can get in that touch of humility and live in that part of the recovery process that they go through, we’ll be better off in the world of resentments.
So let’s do a little section on what creates these resentments. Obviously, I think we’ve covered the first one pretty well unfair treatment. I mean, that, that definitely creates [00:21:00] resentments. I mean, you’re, you’re going to be unfair to your husband. You’re going to be unfair to your wife. It’s just humans and you come home, you’re living.
You’re not thinking you’re not filtered. We struggle on a daily basis.
Cortney Donelson: We are taught to be independent, to look out for ourselves. And I think that filters into all of our relationships in a lot of times, the first thing, the first person that we think about whenever we want something is ourselves.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so we’re going to fall into the trap of being mean unkind, all these things that we don’t want to be right. And that’s going to create a resentment when you treat someone unfairly, they’re going to be resentful. So there’s a lot of things that happens in creating resentments that we can.
Prevent, but this is the normalicy of it. If you’re not resentful at somebody calling you stupid in the middle of an argument, there’s something wrong. Right. Right. And they didn’t mean the whole word that you’re really stupid, but they [00:22:00] said it. And if you’re not resentful about that, now, if you’re chronically resentful about that, that’s a whole nother problem on another level.
But you see, so that’s the biggest thing. The first thing I wanted to point out in, in the normalicy of all this you’re, you’re going to have that happen. But in the article that I found kind of modeled a little bit here off this episode, I, I thought it was really cool that some of the things that they wrote down this was a powerful component of resentments that really got me to.
Their quote or whatever. They said that this is the result of inadequately expressed emotion after a painful event or experience. And I thought, wow, you know, if that, to me is something that you can manage something you control, but something that probably is well is super, highly confident, even for talkative people.
The abandonment [00:23:00] people we talk, we express, you know, right. We’re always wanting to, there’s a lot that we don’t say, particularly when we’re vulnerable or feeling some sort of feelings about something. We tend to hold them in. Suffocate them. Right. Right. When you have inadequately expressed emotion, that very likely is going to absolutely lead to resentment states.
I just, I thought that was pretty on point. Yep, absolutely. And then you ask yourself, well, so what types of things are going to cause pain?
Cortney Donelson: Everything from the very little mundane to the big, huge life-changing events, she made
Chris Gazdik: a rhyme, a love it. Oh, did I did mundane and pain?
Cortney Donelson: Call me Dr. Sue
Chris Gazdik: set everything from the mundane all the way up to like, yeah.
I mean, there’s, there’s so many things. I mean, goodness, the possibilities are daunting. Self-doubt [00:24:00] that causes pain shame that causes pain, feeling inadequate, that causes pain, abusive partners that obviously causes pain. It’s a little dramatic, but you know, trauma experiences a life as we. Confusion causes pain, feeling lonely, causes pain, getting criticisms and receiving silent treatment racism.
Age-ism sexism
Cortney Donelson: rejection. I mean, the list
Chris Gazdik: goes on, right? If those are causing you pain in your marriage and they’re inadequately expressed, these states or resentments are going to resolve, this is why it is so important to find a way to connect on issues as, as you and mark talked about, even through such a tough time as finding out, you know, sex addiction is a present entity in our marriage.
Do you have to find a way to connect through those things? Because [00:25:00] if you have the inadequately expressed emotion, I would say not almost a choice you’re, you’re trapped in that. That’s where I get to the trapped thing. So, yeah. Okay. How about feeling abandoned and golfed causing pain? I had said I meant to do it off the front end and I forgot anytime I talk about marriage, I like to mention emotion focused therapy.
Let’s do it. Right. Do you remember emotion focused therapy? He
Cortney Donelson: asked, cause you asked me
Chris Gazdik: every time. I know because of a reason for that. Right? Like it is so fundamental. And I can
Cortney Donelson: tell you a
Chris Gazdik: funny story as please.
Cortney Donelson: I can’t say a name or anything else, but I’m ghost writing a book. And this person is describing conflict and resentment in their marriage.
And I immediately thought, oh, well, this author is the abandoned and the spouse is the.[00:26:00]
Ah, this is why I’m done.
Chris Gazdik: Oh,
no,
that’s awesome. I’m so glad because that’s awesome. That’s what honestly, what I endeavor to do. Because it is such a profound part of the cycles that people go through. It is such a normal part and the real quick and dirty of it is you have one of two insecurities, abandonment or engulfment and golf mint withdrawals, and pulls back, shuts down, puts up walls, abandonment people will pursue engage criticize and run the person over.
Unfortunately, and people typically are in an opposites attract format where one person is pursuing. The other person is withdrawing and onward goes the cycle. And I’m telling you, if you get the reality of how common that is day to day life, then look at how that causes pain [00:27:00] and look at how that deals and creates resentments.
Cortney Donelson: Absolutely people live in it.
Chris Gazdik: They do. And we’re going to talk about how to get out of it. Thank goodness, and even prevent them. How about that? Prevent. Why do we want to prevent that? Well, what a resentments create? Let’s do a quick little section on what did they create? Oh my goodness. This was another in a good therapies list.
I thought it was cool. Continue or reoccurring feelings of strong emotions, such as anger. When thinking about a specific interaction or experience continue or reoccurring strong feelings such as anger guys. Listen, this can go on for years.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. I think to the point where, you know, you have this buildup of recurring feelings and then if something’s on a smaller scale happens that resentment is already built up and you’re just gonna, well, they call it flip your lid.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You’re in a word, [00:28:00] you know, and I was, I was talking to a couple just yesterday in, in. And, you know, if you could just see the, I w I wish sometimes that’s why I try to do through the eyes of a therapist, right through therapist is rather like, you know, watching people go through this process of where they were and where they are.
And we were talking about how, and I think it’s probably true. This isn’t scientific. This is just anecdotally my experience through my eyes. Like, I think the vast majority of relationships tend to be conflict avoidant. Now there’s high conflict relationships as well, where people just spit out their thoughts and bang into each other, and then it’s over and it’s done with, and there’s advantages to that.
There’s also disadvantages there’s advantages and disadvantages to at a conflict avoidant marriage as well though. And one of the big disadvantages is occurring to me. As we’re talking about, this is in a conflict avoidant marriage, [00:29:00] this idea. This constant chronic reality. Like this can go on for years.
And how many times do you hear a couple say, well, we grew out apart. We grew out
Cortney Donelson: of love. Exactly. We feel like roommates or
Chris Gazdik: that’s because this stuff is ongoing and not addressed. And the chronic resentment state pervades back to their list of continue or reoccurring strong emotions, inability to stop thinking about the event that triggered the strong emotions, feelings of regret, fear, or avoidance of conflict, even perpetually you already avoid conflict.
And now you’re going to avoid it even more because of the resentments tense relationships. How about tents? That’s
Cortney Donelson: an understatement. Yeah. It’s going to say that’s a, that’s a soft word
Chris Gazdik: software. Yeah. Feeling invisible, which is a horrible feeling inadequate, which has also. [00:30:00] No I’m in touch with that one pretty good or less than in some way than the other.
I mean, the, these, these states of resentments can create this stuff in your own experience. This is again, resentments hurt the person, harboring the resentment much more than the person that’s resented. I mean, you’re creating inadequacies in your own self. You’re creating a feeling of less than or invisible of regrets of,
Cortney Donelson: I have a question about specific examples on that last one, feeling invisible, inadequate, or less than do you find that typically when resentment is involved, the wives kind of.
Are more involved maybe with children and husbands or maybe workaholics are more involved with their careers. And that’s where resentment lies in the fact of when it comes to feeling invisible, unseen, undervalued, [00:31:00] inadequate because all their focused attention is over here rather than on spouse. You
Chris Gazdik: know, it’s interesting.
My first impression is and I’m curious what you think about that. And I go a lot more with the abandonment engulfment cycles, which aren’t gendered. So there’s gender norms that we go to. Yeah. I’m going to go out and produce, or I’m going to take care of the homestead and the other. Person’s like, well, that’s great that you’re taking Beryl homestay.
What about me? Well, that’s great. You’re going out to go produce, but dang, what about me? I think that we have gender norms like that, that can trigger stuff, but more so pain I think is not created by. Because you can even take pride in that. Like, I do a great job at my job and you feel good about that internally, but whereas when you get into an engulfment state of mind, man, it is a sheer pain space or abandonment.
It’s terrifying that [00:32:00] that tends to create more of what you get when you’re feeling invisible. When you’re in a state of pain and not able or making the choice to express it, notice the double they’re not able or making the choice to express it. You then you arrive at being invisible or less than, or just faulty inadequate.
I feel like. Does that make sense? Yeah. My own list was lots and lots of anchor. That’s what I listed before I read the article feeling trapped, especially when the resentment state becomes chronic. It occurs to me when I was thinking about what effects does this create? Listen, I cannot tell you how many times couples counseling have come into my office and said, I would like to gain communication skills together with him or her communication communication.
We don’t communicate well, [00:33:00] we communicate differently. It, and, and I was hook line and sinker. I, you know, early first half of my career I would say it at least maybe a third, you know, I’m like, yeah, we’re going to work on communication skills, you know? And I love to tell couples, like, I don’t think you have a communication problem at all.
And their heads just rolling Ryan. And they do exactly what your face is doing right now. Like what are you talking about? And I’m like, look, you’ve already talked about so many dynamic things like having kids and planning a wedding and dreaming up your dreams together and creating your unique passion together.
I mean, you know, you’ve, you’ve talked about your in-laws
Cortney Donelson: the skill is there,
Chris Gazdik: right? It’s all in place. When you get emotional though, you can’t talk about whether you’re going to get Coke or Pepsi at the store. I’ve said that thousands, hundreds of times and couples kind of begin to get it right. They begin to understand, you know, so can we say that when you have [00:34:00] resentments, it completely blocks whether the other partner even knows it’s there or not, he completely doesn’t diminish it.
Doesn’t, you know, break down it blocks. It destroys communication.
Cortney Donelson: That makes sense. You can’t
Chris Gazdik: converse with somebody that you’re actively resenting very well. Right. And all of the internal stuff that’s going on with that resentment, it’s very, very powerful good therapies list. Again, I have a back and forth my own there there’s in this particular episode, this is where I was kind of talking about it.
I, I was thinking about it and read it when it was talking about before, how do you know you have a resentment where they had some cool things, when you, when you feel there’s an unbalance of power, when you’re doing that, score-keeping that you were talking about health and medical injuries or hurtful words.
When you hear yourself saying hurtful, mean things to your spouse,[00:35:00]
Calling them a jackass because they’re really like a donkey or something to be silly or calling them even worse, curse word names at somebody that happens. Gottman’s what a four horsemen contempt, when you have contempt for somebody, okay. You might have a resentment, you haven’t identified yet. And this is why you’re acting so mean and unkind.
So I think because I do believe people do not tend to be mean like that, but this stuff just comes out when your raw said, that’s a little bit of a pause. Wait a minute. Well, what do I got to do internally to figure out my state of
resentment?
Cortney Donelson: What have you seen keeping score look like?
Chris Gazdik: It’s an interesting question.
I mean,
Yeah. Like not point totals, like the NCAA basketball. Okay. [00:36:00]
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. I’ve
Chris Gazdik: challenged me in the moment to give good examples. You know, people keep score with like, you, you, you all, we always, you never, those kinds of phrases come out. Right. I remember that when you said this, you know, de
Cortney Donelson: or we always, I had no exam, but we always move to follow your career.
Chris Gazdik: That’s that’s an excellent one. You know, every time I talked to the kids, you jump in and won’t let me finish my sentence, you know, there’s, there’s when you track back to history and historical reality and bring it into the present, you’ve probably fallen into school. How’s that a cool way to frame it up?
I think. Yeah. Let me see, where are we at? What creates, what are the effects. I think we’ve made a good enough point about the long-term effects. There are, I guess I already did it earlier, but man, I really let’s take a quick little pause and, [00:37:00] and again, recognize this all sounds bad, doesn’t it?
Yeah. It sounds painful. And chronic, I guess we’ve flavored it that way in our conversation, but what happens when you have a resentment and you resolve it like pretty quickly, right?
Cortney Donelson: Right. I think you have a healthy relationship
Chris Gazdik: or a healthy internal process. Right. And I think that’s the point I want to make here is that there are a lot of times probably that you will find yourself having a resentment, letting go of that resentment, moving into a forgiveness stance.
And the other person never is the wiser for having you gone through.
Cortney Donelson: Oh, yeah,
that’s perfect. Yeah. That’s what I mean about, yeah. Well, I think often in a marriage when you’re living together and you’re doing life together, I think it’s going to happen often all
Chris Gazdik: the time. Yeah. And it’s normal. I don’t understand why [00:38:00] she can’t freaking cook a piece of chicken.
It’s over cooked every time.
She’s so panicked by this is so stupid self stop it. What are you talking about? She just cooked you meals all week long. What are you complaining about? And she has no idea. He just went through that. Right. This is so normal. And, and, and I think that, you know, in a lot of natural states, we’re catching it.
We’re aware of it. We, we, we are, you know, mature people can grown adults and we can kind of catch ourselves. And I think we do a lot, so yeah, this is way normal.
Cortney Donelson: So if people can catch themselves doing it, can that lay the foundation for them being able to do it for the bigger things are the things they’re not even aware of or those big anger.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah. Those, those are the things that do develop that it’s kind of insidious, you know, it gets under your skin and you don’t even know what’s bugging you. Yeah. I mean, I think that happens a lot of times too, which is probably why I’ve flavored and focused on this a lot. I know
Cortney Donelson: people who journal to help [00:39:00] themselves figure that
Chris Gazdik: out, go further with that.
Absolutely.
Cortney Donelson: Well I think a lot, it’s not just resentment. I think a lot of people struggle with defining or you know, kind of diagnosing their own emotions. Like they feel something, they know that, but a lot of people have been from childhood even trained to suppress them. So they don’t even know what they’re feeling
Chris Gazdik: at times trained to suppress them, love that that’s on point, which is going back to feeling, you know, you get trapped, you get trapped in this a little bit because when you don’t even know that it’s going up, because you’re just doing what you were kind of trained to do, but you’re right.
You know, there’s, there’s probably. Several things. You know, journaling, as you mentioned to sort through what you’re experiencing, I’m a big believer in friendships. You’ve got to chat it out with a friend and when you’re chatting and getting their responses, you’re working out what it is [00:40:00] that you’re experiencing with these emotions.
And is
Cortney Donelson: it helpful to kind of feel the physical parts of your emotions and kind of figure out like, oh wait, my heart’s beating faster or my stomach is clenching. I must be angry or frustrated.
Chris Gazdik: Why do I have a teeth grinding issue? Something’s grinding at me. Yeah, absolutely. Thirdly, pay attention, pay attention to your body cues because your body will tell you you’re exactly on point what you’re experiencing before you even cognitively know it.
Isn’t that amazing? Yeah. You know, we’ve talked about the implicit bias on the show before, and, you know, we we’ve talked about the subconsciousness reality and you know, there’s a really cool journaling activity where you just free write is freaked me out, but I’m going to put it in here real quick because it works.
So maybe you’ve heard of this before you take a free writing journaling, just your [00:41:00] thoughts, whatever. And then you circle 10 words and then you take those 10 words and you narrow that down to the, to the seven most important words in those 10. And then you write a sentence using as many of those leftover words there that you can use in a sentence, that sentence.
Oh, wow. Is on point.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah that is facinating,
Chris Gazdik: it really is. I did this at a, at a, at a conference. I mean, I forget what sentence it said, but I read the sentence and I’m like, that’s exactly where I’ve been. Oh,
wow. Weekend.
Cortney Donelson: Well, yeah, I use this in writing, even creative writing. Because the whole idea in writing is, is to show, not tell something.
So you want readers to experience it and not just hear about a scene. Right. So I actually try to sit there and say,
Chris Gazdik: showing, not telling.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. And so you don’t want to say he was angry. You want to say his face was [00:42:00] flushed. His fists were clenched his, you know, and so I actually use that in writing as I, I tried.
Put the physical next to the emotion. So I’m not using the emotion itself. I will
Chris Gazdik: now as well.
Thank you for that teaching. I seriously. That’s awesome. And well, and I’ve known that telling a story is huge because you’re telling you’re conveying a whole experience here in this deal and not just telling somebody yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot there that to, to identify unpack what it is that you’re experiencing through journaling, through talking with a friend through paying attention with your body, kind of like to get one more, but I think we need to move on.
Yep. Yeah. I do want to read this, this, these were my thoughts. So typically. And many times over, we handle this internally, the resentment. So are they normal in a word like, dude, yes, please. You’re out normal stuff is, and I was just thinking about it and I wrote, you know, we may feel resentments then come to a new understanding when the [00:43:00] emotion subsides, thus, we realize the other person did not mean it that way.
Or they just had a moment. And I, and I’m thinking that ultimately we forgive sometimes prior to the other person, even knowing that we had the resentment, we can enter into a forgiveness state. So now we can proceed to problem solving or making agreements and new understandings and new agreements because you’re free.
And you’ve gone through this internal process in your absolutely free from, you know, the captivity, burdens and chains. That resentments can create.
Cortney Donelson: Have you heard of the four agreements? The book I have actually. So one of them is don’t take anything personally and that just slides right into all of this.
Chris Gazdik: It’s a big part of marriage. Yeah. Okay. So let’s move on to the next segment here. Have I thought about how can we cope with them? So you [00:44:00] have them have all the time, they suck they’re normal. So how do we cope? How do we cope with having resentments? I think this starts with a forgiveness attitude. You know, they, they, they, they talk about having an attitude of gratitude at ROMs.
I think that was on my list as well, but I really think this starts with, you know, being able to. I actually, you know, honestly, Cortney, it occurs to me as I was just setting it up. I probably should’ve said this really starts from the humility that back to my quote.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah, it
does.
Chris Gazdik: Right. The antidote to resentments is, is humility.
We need to put that on a merchant cup or a t-shirt. If you have humility, then you can move. And then you start the process of recovering from a resentment, with a forgiveness attitude. [00:45:00] So you look at yourself, you realize you’re not perfect. Don’t forget it in there by the grace of God, go, I, as they say, and then you develop the forgiveness attitude, which, you know, in an early marriage, you newly weds out there.
And you’re so good at this, you know, because you haven’t built up the layers of frustration and crud that we let build up corrosion on our emotions. How’s that for telling the story of emotions. And you just sort of, it didn’t mean it they’re kind of cute. They just, weren’t thinking very clearly that day or whatever, you’ll come up with to develop a forget.
Now I’m not talking about buying, being naive, right. That’s a whole different or abused problem or abused. Right, right. But, but when you develop a forgiveness attitude, you know, you can, you can see through the nonsense, you know, I say with parenting all the time, you have to see through the behavior of your kids develop x-ray vision.
[00:46:00] Is that
Cortney Donelson: because you feel loved. What do you mean? So like when people are first married, I think they feel loved. I mean, this person just chose them. Right. And so over time, I think those feelings of being cared for and loved diminish if there’s no intentionality back and forth,
Chris Gazdik: I think so to address that, I hadn’t thought about that, but you know, when you’re a, your love tank is full it’s another, a book
Cortney Donelson: relational needs are being
Chris Gazdik: met.
Right, right, right. And you, you feel good about that and that makes it easier to stay in a state of forgiveness that you’ll need all of that.
Cortney Donelson: No, it’s not personal, you know that they love you,
Chris Gazdik: right? Yeah. No, that’s a, that’s an excellent point. We did an episode on 94 to go deep in it as we’re not going to be able to go deep into this, how can we go deep into the idea of letting go.
It’s a lot. Janus Holly booth was on our show and she was also in episode 94, talking about the process of letting go listen to her chapters. [00:47:00] Baggage was the first. And then courage, solitude, introspection. And then I love the issue of the last chapter. We should talked about commitment, you know, letting go as a whole process.
Like I said, I’m not going to have time to go there, but if you really have a pretty strong state of resentment that you’re managing, if you’ve got a lot of these intense feelings, you’ve been keeping score, you’re, you’re saying mean things to your spouse and you’re identifying this, you know, there may be, she went through a life journey of letting go.
You’ve talked about, I mean, gosh, the letting go that you had to go through, what was it your seven day. Three days of there
Cortney Donelson: was nine days, but it took a lot longer than that. That was the raw, like pain part of learning
Chris Gazdik: stuff. But that, that initial nine days of torment and licking the floor, she, she went and did I mean, that’s what I say when I’m like in a bad spot, man.
I was licking the floor, like yeah. You know, it’s [00:48:00] a horrible, so she went and did journeys, literally their journeys to the west. And she talked a lot about, and you can take a deep dive on her, her letting go. So many things in her life that she’d been carrying with her, you know, only pack what you can carry was the title of her book.
If I’m correct. I think
vulnerability. That’s how you cope. Yeah. Tolerating, the ability to be vulnerable. It sounds like fun. Right? That builds
Cortney Donelson: intimacy.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Remember unexpressed emotion tends to create the states, right? So you do need to practice, build up your ability to be vulnerable, because that is not a natural state. [00:49:00] You start with smaller things to be vulnerable, and then you take another step with another thing.
And then maybe another step, add another person in your life that you open up another little step and you begin to build and grow the ability to be vulnerable. Is it requirement almost in a marriage? Yeah, here’s an interesting thought. Can you have a healthy marriage? If you do not have the ability to be vulnerable?
I don’t think so. No. And does your ability to be vulnerable, have anything to do with your spouse?
Cortney Donelson: I don’t think so. That’s another choice.
Chris Gazdik: It is. She puts her hand in the air, you know? Yeah. I mean, these are, you know, but boy, we do like to blame our spouse where every time I’ve tried to tell them anything, they don’t listen to me.
No, they just shut me down or criticize me or says no, your ability to be vulnerable has nothing
Cortney Donelson: to do with the other one. Yeah. If you start with you, if you start with what your fears are, people are more apt to listen when they don’t feel like they have to go on, on defense [00:50:00] mode. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: So say that again or more about that.
That’s that’s big.
Cortney Donelson: So when, when I’m being vulnerable with, with my spouse, I know I need to start with what I’m feeling and not make it about what he’s doing or what’s happening to me or how I’m perceiving that. But it’s more about, okay, I have this fear or I have this hurt And, and when you start with the I right.
Chris Gazdik: Statements, I statements, but one use I-statements.
Cortney Donelson: But when you, when you’re vulnerable with what you’re afraid of, because really it all boils down to, like, when I was angry, I was really afraid. I wasn’t angry. I was afraid of losing the marriage or of being hurt again. It was all fear-based. And so when I’m vulnerable in that way and say, this is what I’m fearing, I’m fearing that our marriage is going to dissolve.
There’s less about what he did and more about what I want us to have and how he can be a part of it. And there’s no self-defense mode that goes up like defending, you know what happened? [00:51:00]
Chris Gazdik: It’s a, it’s probably on par with you speaking earlier about being able to Allow others to see the vulnerability in marriage and not taking things personally and
Cortney Donelson: admitting when you’re wrong, that’s vulnerable
Chris Gazdik: way.
Definitely a hard thing to do as well. But again, not taking things personally, and then being able to, you know, just speak about your own experience, your own vulnerability and what your own, even when somebody screwed you over. Yeah. I’m supposed to, okay. Cortney, let me challenge this. Okay. So my wife has an affair on me and I’m supposed to come here and say how, how my feelings are, you know, when they like literally broke vows, how am I supposed to come to myself and talk about how I, what I’m fearful of?
I’m fearful. I’m going to kill them right now. Yeah, yeah,
Cortney Donelson: yeah. Yes.
Neil Robinson: Powerful
Cortney Donelson: wrongness. Yeah. [00:52:00] And there’s righteous anger. There is a thing, righteous anger, but it’s how you handle that. And how you’d communicate it, that matters. Right.
Chris Gazdik: Because in those intense moments and in that intense time when something’s kind of coming out and you’ve stumbled upon something, you know, humility,
Cortney Donelson: right.
And, and if, if you, yeah, if you don’t express the anger appropriately and you hide it or, or stuff, it it’ll come out later as resentment anyway. So
Chris Gazdik: over and over and over and over again,
Cortney Donelson: you know, the one thing I said to my husband early on was you may have broken your vows, but I don’t have to break mine.
Chris Gazdik: There you go.
Cortney Donelson: And my point was, you know, I want to restore this. I’m not going to dive into, I wish you were dead mentality though. I wanted to, I wanted to, but here’s
Chris Gazdik: a new quote from a book I’m writing now. All right. A sneak peak way in advance because I’m not in a rush in the pandemic [00:53:00] as you know, It is easier to see your spouse than to be seen by your spouse.
Something I’ve been playing around with lately in my mind a lot, actually. Boy, think about that for just a second. You know, it is easy to kind of look and see and observe what you’re being shown. If you’re willing and humble enough, grateful enough to be shown, you know, the reality of this is to be seen, to be vulnerable, to show like that’s great, Cortney, you know, you can show me your thoughts and whatever, and I’ll look and see that, but you ain’t gonna, you know, you don’t need to know.
You don’t need to know what I’m thinking hard way, way harder. And, and, and again, so this is challenging. If you’re tuned into listening to this show at, at why your husband is such a jerk or why your wife is so stupid. And we’re saying like, hold on, Look at how well, the [00:54:00] challenges you have internally, by the way, you’re way more empowered.
They’re oh yeah. You’re completely disempowered with what the other person’s doing anyway. Right? Develop empathy speaks for itself. How do we cope with resentments and how to resolve them manage outstanding stress? The cornerstone of mental health is self-care every hear me say that before? No, never thousand times over.
Right. If you’re in a constant state of just, you know, parents out there, look, give yourself some grace, by the way that is that on my list. Next is it next? Oh, there we go. Yeah. Right. When you’re having stress or your work is edgy right now, or, or you do have medical complications that you’re trying to work through, you know, your, your ability and state of mind to handle resentments is going to be diminished.
So you have got to take care of the priority of self [00:55:00] in order to cope with the resentments. Yeah. Solidify the self grace, give yourself some grace. It was next on the list. Right? My phone has got another potential scam phone call right now. You get
Cortney Donelson: these
Chris Gazdik: all the time. It’s nauseated. One of the most challenging things about relationships is to see the perspective of the other person.
Somehow we do this well with the innocence of a child as we parent, I don’t know why, like why do you know why it’s because they’re, they’re, they’re defenseless. The, you know, I don’t
Cortney Donelson: know better, right?
Chris Gazdik: Why we don’t do this with our spouse?
Cortney Donelson: Oh, it’s a game. It’s a game changer, right? It’s a game changer. When I was able to understand that my spouse was an addict and therefore was also a victim to some degree, I was able to look at him differently.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. You know, when you know something’s going on in the other person’s life that is [00:56:00] hurting them or hounding them or trapping them, not saying you have to tolerate it forever.
Cortney Donelson: No. And even on a smaller scale, when someone is having something going on at work and they’re extremely stressed and then come home and snap.
To be able to see the perspective of what they’re handling all day long, kind of like a child at school who comes home and feel safe again and unleashes the tantrums that they held in at school. Why, why can’t spouses do that either? And I realize we’re adults,
Chris Gazdik: it’s a little more accountability than as an adult and here as a child, but it is the same thing.
It’s not about us. It isn’t about us. Yes. Going back to taking things personally, I like that choose the focus point. Often I talked about this in real understanding emotions and becoming your best self. It was one of the four primary categories and I’m just doing a class on by the way. And I’m excited about that.
And that was one of the four. And I probably need to make that a bigger part of the four because I brought it up multiple [00:57:00] times as opposed to the other pieces, because
this goes back to your choice, right? As you choose what you focus on. That determines what your emotion is, right? That’s called cloak. As you choose what you focus on that determines what your emotion is. I actually think I have a chapter on that in the book somewhere along those same lines, because man, you know, you can focus on what they did over and over and over again to you all night long.
How do you think that morning’s going to go, right? That’s ugly. It’s going to be ugly and you’re going to be feeling pain the entire time. Now again, I love how you point out. We’re not talking about abusive situations when you’re being harmed physically or emotionally. You know, this that’s a different scenario.
We’re not talking about the naivete of just, oh, forgive them.
Let them be. It’s all fine.
And [00:58:00] we’re not talking about co-dependence where I’m going to make them well. And we’re just talking about like, you know, get grounded in. What you’re choosing to focus on, right? When you’re harboring things,
Cortney Donelson: especially it reminds me, I think it was episode 95 that we’ve referred to in the beginning where my husband and I were on the show.
And we said, we learned, and we teach other couples. And when we mentor them to focus on not on the reaction that you’re getting from your spouse, but the, to minister to the pain underneath, you’ve talked about that. So when someone comes home, let’s say, we’ll use the example again, of stress at work and they blow up at you.
Okay. I can see that you’ve had a bad day kind of a thing. I’m not in those words maybe, but to understand, okay. It’s, you know, there’s ministered to the pain underneath that is producing that reaction that you’re the victim or target of.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah. You’ve made a point of that. [00:59:00] I think you and mark talked about that really eloquently in that episode, when we dug a deeper dive on that, you know, The
Cortney Donelson: so you’re choosing to focus on
Chris Gazdik: something.
It is a choosing focus point, but as I was going to say, like the, you know, the giving that your, you know, the gift that you’re giving, when you, when you really look at your own perspective and, and how you’re seeing the other person in their pain, it is a game changer. I think you said it a little bit ago.
It, it, it changes the way that you’re going to interact. And gosh, it just destroys the resentment. It does destroys the resentment at the root. How do we prevent this stuff anyway, in the first place? Right? Let’s do a quick little segment here at the end on how can we prevent this stuff? I thought about apology, forgiveness cycles.
Now here’s the, you know, that that’s another whole show as well that I think we’ve done. I’m not going to take the time to quote it and see if we did or not an episode, but [01:00:00] apology, forgiveness cycles are. Invaluable to everyday life with your spouse. There’s another quote. There you go. Apology, forgiveness cycles are invaluable there.
They’re almost necessary to live a life with your spouse. And here’s the point that I always loved to make about apology and forgiveness cycles. Do you need an apology to come first before you enter into a forgiveness cycle? Or do you need forgiveness to come first before you actually,
Cortney Donelson: you know, the egg?
See? No, I don’t think you need the apology. First. Whichever
Chris Gazdik: side that you’re on is the side that goes first, right? Right, because if you’re waiting on an apology to forgive or you’re waiting on them to apologize,
Cortney Donelson: ready for forgiveness,
Chris Gazdik: and you’re
Cortney Donelson: just going to hang up. Yeah. You’re not positioned to forgive anyway.
Chris Gazdik: Right. If you’re waiting, so you’re going to go through apology, forgiveness cycles. You’re going [01:01:00] to be a, both sides of that thing many times over, you know, throughout a week, if you think about. And so yeah. Apology, forgiveness cycles, prevent resentments, developing an attitude of gratitude comes up again.
You know, if you’re really humble and aware of yourself and your own. Realities that I think we’ve hit on throughout our conversation today. Like that’s going to limit resentments if you’re, if you’re grateful. And that, that goes back to feeling loved in the beginning of a relationship, you know, you’re, you’re all warm.
This is great. They actually chose me, you know, and then you can easily access gratitude for that until that wears off and wears out, you know? And, but, so how do you develop an attitude like that? There’s gratitude lists. There’s, you know, daily thoughts and reminders. This is why we connect. This is why we give compliments, you know, can you receive [01:02:00] compliments?
You know, these, these are,
Cortney Donelson: and surround yourself with people who are
Chris Gazdik: grateful. Oh, that’s in your marriage.
Cortney Donelson: Okay. Yeah. I mean, other couples who are grateful or other friends who aren’t going to put your spouse down and feed into that resent. Surround yourself, surround yourself with positivity and people who are grateful for things and can show you that gratitude.
And can
Chris Gazdik: a couple be a couple without other couples?
Neil Robinson: Huh?
Cortney Donelson: I think we lost you
Chris Gazdik: can a couple be a couple without our other couples. Meaning, you know, you just be, you know, you live in a social environment, right? Do you engage people as individuals and then couples engaged couples as couples kind of as well.
Now I just want to do a tongue twister to just have fun with it, but I think that’s a really good point. That’s an excellent moment, Cortney exposure learned to tolerate this being careful but develop expectations the right way we did do another [01:03:00] episode on next expectations. I know that look expectations, get a bad rap, but if you really set up expectations together in a healthy and productive.
Then you’re going to know what to expect, and you’re not going to develop resentments resentments or in a nutshell resentments or I’m sorry. Expectations are developed through agreements or long-term norms. And I always like to use the idea. If you have lunch on Sundays every Sunday for 72 weeks, probably this week on Sunday at about two o’clock, we’re going to have lunch and I can expect that.
Right? Okay. Long-term norms. And then mutual agreed agreements. That’s the way you can develop expectations. If you’re developing them pretty much, any other way, screwed, screwed, and you’re going to have resentments. They’re not going to meet your needs. They’re not going to meet your, what you think things should be like, and the resentments [01:04:00] are born that way.
So it is a wonderful expectations. They’re a great thing, right down the right way. They’re a wonderful prevention for resentment states. Don’t let the buildup address relationship issues as they present, and then a good old fashioned. What, what is something that old couples say they, they, they have learned to do in their marriage,
Cortney Donelson: drink wine together.
Now compromise,
Chris Gazdik: compromise. You know, they, I love that about you give it to, you ever talked to many old couples that have been together for a while. I love having those conversations. And that’s one that usually comes up in his conversation. Well, you know, young man, that’s what he says to me. Well, you know, young man, you just really have to learn how to compromise.
You have to learn how to give and take. She
Cortney Donelson: wanted to do a, I wanted to be, so we compromised and today,
Chris Gazdik: right, Cortney, [01:05:00] it has truly been a joy to work with you through these episodes. I enjoy your perspective, your your beautiful sharing. You’re an awesome person. I appreciate you kind of providing the teaching that you’ve done on the show it’s been, it’s been well worth the while.
So thank you very much. Thank you. You’re welcome. Been fun. We will be moving on next week with I think Mr. Graves is on tap to be the co-host Mr. Old co-host from before, but you guys are doing well in the world. And we do have some tough things in the world with Ukraine. I did mention that I was going to talk about that.
I didn’t today. Be careful about propaganda. I’ll just give a little teaser out there for that take care of, have a good week, and we’ll talk to you soon.