When it's a one-way street...part 5

[Crazyville]

You don't feel resentment just because someone hasn't done something that you want them to. You feel resentment when a closely held belief or expectation has been violated.

Resentments can derive from unmet expectations, absolutely. I think my confusion is the basis of the expectation in the first place. There seems to be a lot of resentment that streams from a sense of entitlement, without any sense of responsibility to or agreement from the other person. Like your example of sex. I believe most marriages begin with the belief that both parties will remain faithful. It's likely even specifically discussed before marriage (certainly was with mine.) Therefore, if one of the parties breaches that agreement and has an affair, there will likely be resentment on the part of the other spouse.

However, I doubt there is usually any specific agreement on the frequency of sex before marriage. So when a HD partner is expecting more sex from the LD partner than the LD partner is willing to provide, the expectation isn't based on any verbal agreement, just on an assumption or a sense of entitlement. Or a maybe selfish desire. Therefore, if the HD partner is wanting something more from the LD partner, they should be willing to offer something in exchange, instead of just expecting it "because......???"

When I was in college, my male roommate would resent the fact that I would leave the living room in our apartment messy. I wasn't doing that "to" him, and I wasn't not cleaning to spite him, I just wasn't thinking about it at all.

To the contrary, I believe you were doing something "to" him. Not intentionally, of course, but that's not the point. Your actions had a direct effect on him, the same as if you were swinging your arms and smacked him in the head. Not intentional, but doing it "to" him just the same. Same as my H eating off of MY plate. (Perhaps this is just a semantics issue in our discussion so I don't want to beat it to death.) It would have been a different story if your roommate had an issue that you didn't dust, when you're not personally responsible for creating the dust. For your old roommate, if he couldn't negotiate an agreement with you in which you respected his wishes, his option was to live with someone else, not to force you to change or to build resentment.

The point was that women can feel neglected if you don't talk to them. Men don't feel that way, but they will feel neglected if you're never home.

This is true for women with their friends as well. Is this true with men with their friends? Do men feel neglected by their male friends if they're not sitting silently in the same room? That was my analogy about everyone getting together so they can fall asleep with each other in the room. Somehow that's bonding?

I can identify with this from a sex-starved marriage perspective. I wanted to have sex, how difficult is it really for my W to agree to have sex with me? What is she really losing? What is she giving up? Historically I would resent that she would not have sex with me, because it seemed like such a small ask, such a minor inconvenience. Furthermore I felt that I would gladly tolerate much greater inconveniences for her, so it added to the perceived injustice. (I look at this entirely differently now, and we are no longer in a sex-starved marriage, I just share this because I very much understand the roots of resentment).

How do you feel differently now? I know your sitch, just specific to this?

In your case, you believe that it is inappropriate to eat off of someone else's plate in a restaurant without asking. You don't have the attitude that for some people it's perfectly fine and for others not, your belief is that doing that is universally considered rude and inconsiderate. Therefore, when H eats off your plate in a restaurant without asking, you resent him for violating your expectation that your food will be left to you.

No, I could care less who does it, until the food is picked off of MY plate. If a couple joins us and they do it to each other, it doesn't bother me at all. If they picked off mine, that would be a problem for me.

Basically, if your H is spending all his time in his "man cave", it's because he assumes that if he approaches you he'll be hit with shaming, and he's doing all he can to avoid that.

Yes, I get that. My H is not doing that. He wants me in the same room, while he's sleeping. It would be fine with me if he was in his man-cave and I could just be in "the same house" in the other room watching my movie snore-free without complaint from him.

Yes, I would imagine that falling asleep with you there feels very safe and comfortable to him. I can't explain the why.

Bummer, I wish you could. I find it rather distracting and would prefer he not be in the same room. So who gets their way?

It's also obvious that you resent him for this -- if you had the "live and let live" attitude you talked about in your post, you'd just turn up the volume and be happy for him, but to you, his behavior seems wrong, because it violates your expectation that if you set out to watch a movie together, then you should actually watch it together, and not instantly fall asleep.

I only have the expectation because that's what he tells me he will do. Just like the fidelity. If he said he was going to fall asleep, I wouldn't have the expectation. And I wouldn't agree to "watch" the movie with him in the first place. I can put out the boundaries just as you said, in fact I have. H has an issue with it. That's the only reason it came up, because H doesn't accept my boundaries.

Thanks for your responses, Accuray. I'm afraid I'm coming off as argumentative. I'm not trying to be, just thinking outloud. Er... in writing. For me, it boils down to how to resolve conflict. We don't seem to have that capacity.