That was a quote from a recovering addict that highlights a great truth for both the addict and the betrayed spouse. Both sets of individuals may have spent years building up resentments to a variety of people and situations. The key in that quote is the word unrealistic.

There are times in our lives when we have realistic expectations that are not met. We can still have resentments towards the things about which we have a fair assumption. If a person were to buy a cheeseburger, it is fair to assume that it would have cheese. If it is served without that cheese, we can a sensible reaction of asking the server to fix our order. That is a simplistic description, but we can extrapolate the situation to more serious issues.

If I’m an addict and I’m resentful that people are angry with me, is it realistic to expect that they wouldn’t be? If I’m a betrayed partner, is it realistic for me to think that the addict won’t have emotions of their own? In both cases, the answer is no.

The key here, is how do we handle the feelings of resentment we may have in those situations?

When we trace back our resentment to the source of the expectation, we can be better poised to address the emotion in ourselves, instead of projecting it on another. Recovery literature states that resentment is the number one offender. As long as we focus on the angry feelings we have toward another, we cannot adequately process what our expectation is and thereby hindering our ability to form a new way of responding and in fact feeling towards others. Recovery is something we have to do for ourselves. In the case of the addict and the betrayed partner, we have to address the origin of our feelings, so that we can determine the correct course of our actions, with the outcome being healthy for ourselves and our partners.