Closing Old Wounds

The client sitting across from me at my desk had a long-term project going on, excavating resentment from his past.

One that he frequently dug up and revisited was his relationship with his former wife. He’d come home one day from work fifteen years ago to find her in their bedroom with one of his friends. A long angry divorce followed. The wife eventually married the friend, had two children with him, and moved to another state.  But the pain and anger on the client’s face made it seem as though the incident had happened last week - instead of the mid-nineties.

            “How much pleasure do you get from this resentment?” I asked him.

            “What do you mean?” he asked, puzzled at the question.

            “No, really,” I told him. “There’s some kind of payoff for you in revisiting this betrayal. I’m just trying to understand it.”

            “I’m not sure,” he replied. “But it’s almost as painful now as when it happened.”

            “Have you ever looked at your part in this divorce? Were you drinking at the time?”

He admitted he was drinking daily, that he was working two jobs and was rarely there for her. But still he felt betrayed that she would cheat on him in his home with his best friend.

As the conversation went on I asked him to start looking at his contribution to the problems between them, rather than looking only at her and his friend. After all, there's more than one dimension to a relationship and we can only do something about our part in it.

I suggested he – in effort to remove his resentment – start wishing her well, perhaps praying for her on a daily basis. I explained that while what she did was an unacceptable and shocking betrayal- there wasn’t any benefit in his staying stuck in that small slice of time. She seemed to have moved on with her life and here he was choosing keep his pain alive by not dealing with his resentment.

The real point of my discussion with him was to help him get perspective on his past so he can stay sober today. After all, there’s nothing like a healthy resentment to start us drinking again.