'I needed to understand what he was going through and he needed to understand what I was going through every day in order to ease that resentment.'
After our daughter was born, I started hating my husband like he was this evil asshole who only cared about himself and his needs.
I would get frustrated with him because he couldn’t understand her different cries. He didn’t have the instincts to take her from me when I wanted some time to myself. He would struggle with tasks I thought were simple. He would be in awe of her “new” behaviors . Anyway, resentment is very difficult for me to pinpoint at the moment since it often manifests as other emotions, like anger, annoyance, hatred. It breeds invisibly and the only way to stop it is to express, empathize and accept him — something that was difficult to do postpartum when my hormones were completely out of whack.
Because if I don’t know why, I will continue to assume he’s doing what he’s doing to intentionally piss me off. Then I’ll get angry, and the resentment builds. That vicious cycle of anger and resentment would drive me over the edge. I would hate myself, him, and our life if that were to happen. We needed to learn to share control.