resentment

I have developed a resentment towards my own husband over diets and weight, and it do not seem to matter if my body is underweight, normal weight or overweight, my resentment seem to stay. I think I feel more and he sees more, but to the point of what he saw I can not say or think of as important.

I know I have to let go of what has happened in the past in order to move on, but seem I have still this resentment.

I know he loves me and by him being the way he use to be it was his own way to try to control his own fear onto me. To me he had too much fear of fat. It would be too much of it. He made comments now and then I did not take seriously, til he one day crossed big time a boundary of mine. I used to be resilient to it before and this no matter my weight which would vary. To me it was at the late part before everything crumbled that he got worse.

There was also a period in our relationship when he thought I was underweight and I did not notice it was like that, and he would try to make me eat more. I did not like that no more then when he would make comments as to make me eat less. The same went if I am normal weight or slightly overweight that he would try various ways to somehow control this. One time I was normal weight and he would still want me to go on the same diet as he was on, and I did so thinking I was overweight. I did not even check. Colleagues wondering why I was on one, I then saw on the scale I was normal weight, while he must have thought I was over weight. I immediately stopped being on it and told him this was the last time I ever would be on one.

I would feel his eyes on me. If and when I ate he would say he could not believe I could eat so much. Lots of things I would shrug off but it got to me over time, especially when noticing how it was used as a weapon to make women in his first family feel inferior (narcissist in that family, and an obsession with looks and weight). It would not matter to me if he himself would loose some or gain some whatsoever, and I could not understand how it could be so important to the point that he was bit by bit invading my integrity and making me feel never as if I was beautiful enough just the way I was. He would be reserved on the compliments but be sure to say something negative or simply silence. Today he gives compliments. Claim on one hand he wanted what he said to me to get through but in another that he was not after to hurt me this way. He claimed he saw no correlation, could not anticipate that his attitude, my insecurities and my resentment, would not want me to share intimacy with him. That I could tell was a big thing to him, mattered, and he would claim no matter what he had always desired me, and that I could not even tell him one time, just one, when he would have ever rejected me, that if any it was the other way around. At the same time he would now and then tell me that "you have to watch it" (my weight), and how afraid, frustrated he would be, over something I could tell was in no real danger.

He himself would be working out much etc, and then suddenly from time to time he would get it in his head to be on a particular diet - even when I could not see why he would be on one. In one way perhaps I had slowed him down, and brought him more back to earth, or else I think he would have gotten even more wrapped up in that world, but in another it's been that I have stood in his way, and he wanted me to be more like him, or perhaps his ex.

Now for some time he has not said, done anything to make me resent him for it or me being prepared to hear something or feel his eyes on me (what I eat or not) or how I look. He too to me took too much concern of what I wore or not, type of clothes. I got sick of it. I already from day 1 of his first comments on my clothes told him to back off as I was old enough and had brain enough to decide what to wear or not. I would notice it either had to do with him not wanting me to risk to show too much skin (too much for his standard) or it had to do with patterns, dots etc when he preferred it to be simple, one colored.

It hurt me as had it been his body I would not have cared about it at all. I would never have made those comments to a partner. I know I have still this wall up and I can't seem to take it down and the wall is resentment.

He has slowed down these days, and apologized many times for him taking it too far in the past. When we met I was underweight but had been even more underweight before and it was not a conscious decision besides that I knew I moved my body in my every day life and ate what I ate that made that happen. I've seen pro and cons in the different weights I have been on but I have not really cared about it. Now as I consciously move my body more I loose weight, but I do so more for health reasons, mental as well, than the "right" look/weight reasons, what it now may be in his eyes.

I hope I can get pass my resentment one day but don't know how to think about it? It seem to blossom up at times, for no reason, but I keep it to myself, don't bother him about it as I honestly do not know what any of us could say about it anymore. I know he is more of a disciplinarian and has been raised in that sort of atmosphere. He would tell me after I had left him once that he had thought, and thought I was right, that he was the one messed up and that he intended to go on his own (therapy), even if he had before told me he did not believe in that.

We know now that he is on the autism spectrum and so him getting wrapped up, wanting to know everything, could come off as not sensitive in one way, but sensitive in another could explain that. I think when he was at his worst he had anxiety, and a way for him to cope was to get on top, to have control, but unfortunately trying to control me while at it. He would always say that he could tell I didn't care, and that then made him push even harder. Compared to his own discipline he has if I look at the bigger picture, over time, been more kind to me, than himself, that is til he wasn't.

Do anyone recognize themselves in my words? How did you get pass your resentment, or did you ever?

[FallingLeaves]

the thing that helped me was to not be so sure of my own self-importance. Because in a way resentment is just another manifestation that happens when you aren't getting what you think you deserve... and you think you deserve things because you have a sense of self-importance and/or a sense of your own 'goodness'.

Well that is the way I see it...

I eventually got over resentment of my twin by realizing that I'm not the good person I paint myself to be, by taking on a lot of the blame and a lot of the burden for the situation I am in, instead of continuing to think it was her fault not my, and that I therefore deserve better. In short doing the one thing people absolutely don't like doing: feeding myself with a lot of negative self-talk that was designed to tear down aspirations instead of being an attempt to bring me more things I supposed I wanted.

And eventually I realized, there was some truth to the things I was telling myself, I really WASN'T the very nice person I made myself out to be, and a lot of the situation I am in is in fact partly of my own choosing. Although I have to be careful lest I make myself a martyr for that cause as well: really I understand we did this together.

And all the negative self-talk helped me not be so attached to the idea that I deserve better than what I'm getting or that I should resent her for this situation where I'm not getting what I'm told to want... I found a lot of other valuable things that way too...

Hi FallingLeaves, and thank you for your words and sharing your own experience of this and too on something so personal and I bet close to your heart. Thank you so much.

Yes I can identify myself in the whole attitude I would never do that to you!-sort of resentment.

I think I felt the sickness of 2 things I never thought would be a sickness in such as exercising and food-relations. I could see how it was twisted around to this sick thing, a sick weapon, and then somehow transformed - but still sick only in a different way - on to the next generation (my husband), still effected from it, and now wanting to make me part of that, and i did not like this new feeling it gave me but it came step by step before full realization. I just knew it didn't feel right. But I use to have a resilience to it. I use to not care. I guess my attitude rubbed my narc parent in law the wrong way. Then again this was not my own parent and I was not impressed. I thought it was all very superficial and a lack of anything substantial. I didn't really care.

I think when we started out we were both health-oriented and I know I was interested in food that had as much nutrition in it as it could get, and how to adjust that to different types of the human ages. I moved my body around a lot, kept myself busy, even if my type of "training" was different from his it was still something I did. The difference was maybe that I never made a thing out of it, I would not wear clothes to exercise in or buy myself a gym card, but I was never the less active. It was so natural to me that when he asked me or took for granted I was working out (at a gym) I went "NOOO". I did not think about what I was doing.

I think this is too exactly what you point out, one's own image of one's self.

I think one part of me thinks and feels the way I would have had we gone through with our divorce and I would have moved on.

The other part of me knows even if he was a total failure at it at first that he got it, when I thought it was too late. Then he got it. How ironic. And him doing his own work on himself, and taking it seriously, and taking narcissism seriously. I would tell him and this was when we had split that if he truly meant what he said, if he truly wanted to do therapy, to do it for his own sake. And that I thought if he was able to work through what he needed to work through, in my opinion, that he would be healed. I was not after revenge as I too did not want to become my mom, the way my mom was with my dad. I wanted him to be as whole as he could be because I knew then he too would be the best dad he could be, and it was from that angle that I viewed it then. I did not think of returning to him then.

I think I have my answer now on why my ex, whom I have nicknamed the psychopath on this forum before (so kind of me, LOL) use to, to me go in these mysterious phases, cycles. I know it because it is that way with me too, the unhappiness, traumas of the past returning to then go away to then return again and it is a sign it hasn't been worked through, but then again one can not stand thinking about it anymore or talking about it anymore because it does not help. Trauma makes us repeat ourselves, over and over.
He would return, again and again, with no trigger except that now we were suppose to be happy, to the issues, the promise that I was not to leave him again and how he had not deserved that, and if he could truly trust that nobody had been in contact with me. It was almost as if these were imaginary people. I can't say if it was jealousy even if I thought so at the time and that that was my fault even if I had not done anything, not flirted or seen someone else, or if it truly was so that he thought I or we could be in any danger, from what ever he was involved in that he could not tell me about.

I do not think the trauma was so much that I had left him. I think the real trauma was that he had felt as if he had been left by a parent. I symbolized something and he had a love/hate for me.

I think so much that things we have not dealt with properly in the past comes back to haunt us but in different shapes and forms, til we finally get it.

I know I have hurt my husband too and made him insecure too but about other things.

In one way my husband remind me of my biological dad who I was to learn was too athletic and good looking and had brains. It was not his fault at the time but we lost contact with my parents splitting up but we would find each other again. My mom told me he had cheated on her, the reason of why there was a split up. That they had tried to move on from it, but she couldn't do it. With the silence and no contact I was let alone as a child with thoughts that there must be something wrong with me, that I was not good enough, and that was why my dad was not with me no more. As an adult and in my own marriage with someone like that, I think it woke up past pain I had forgotten about.

I have seriously asked him if he have not once thought of leaving me or why he hasn't left me as I know he has suffered too, been unhappy too, and why he would place himself in a to me inferior position to tell me that he is only waiting for me to come home, for me to return, that he loves me. That he knows where we are different, why the collisions has been the way they have been, and where we are the same. I've asked him why he has settled and that this can't be any good for him and so on if he has felt for so long that he is only waiting, and he only replies that he is sure, and he trust that I will get back to how I was before, in time.He don't have the same temper no more, he does not take defense like before. He has settled many internal things about himself. He has told me that if he can change, I can change, and not repeat old issues and/or hold it against him. That he only wants me to be happy. And that we got this. That we didn't go all this way for him to then loose me.

What I don't like about myself is that I have this tendency to not get out of relationships that are toxic for me in time. I guess I am thinking I can deal with it or it will get better. Then I sink so low that it is hard to get to higher grounds but still hoping one day I will be able too. Resentment is one of the lower, negative feelings there is, and this is something I am doing to myself now, he ain't doing it.