Resentment Can Reveal the Relationship Expectations We Have Not Admitted
Elizabeth Gilbert argues that resentment in relationships can reveal expectations a person had not admitted to having. When disappointment shows her what she wanted, she says, she can either take responsibility for that desire or sulk. Gilbert also says romance makes it harder for her to separate her moods from her partner: she has learned that bad feelings can arise without anyone causing them, yet still finds herself blaming a partner when she is in a relationship.
Resentment can expose the outcome you had not admitted wanting
Elizabeth Gilbert uses the phrase “I have no cherished outcome” as an aspiration for her friendships. She traces it to what she calls the Celtic Poem of Approach, which she understands as words for meeting new people or entering another group’s territory. The poem’s speaker promises to honor the other person’s gods, drink from their well, bring an undefended heart, and not negotiate by withholding. Gilbert says she may not have the whole poem right, but she returns to its spirit: approaching an encounter without requiring it to end a particular way.
For Gilbert, the phrase is not just a principle to offer other people; it is a way to notice what she expects from them. She says she often tells friends “I have no cherished outcome,” and hopes she means it. When she feels hurt, resentful, excluded, or misunderstood, she asks whether an outcome she wanted has failed to arrive.
The expectation may only become visible after the disappointment. Gilbert can believe she is being easygoing, then discover that she had been counting on something when it does not happen. “Sometimes the only way you can find out that you had a cherished outcome is when you didn’t get it.”
Sometimes the only way you can find out that you had a cherished outcome is when you didn’t get it.
That makes resentment a prompt for self-examination: what did she want, and had she recognized that desire before the disappointment? Gilbert says she then has a choice between trying to honor “I have no cherished outcome” and sulking. She describes being better at taking responsibility for herself in friendships, where she tries not to put outcomes on other people. She has come to see those friendships as the true loves of her life.
In romance, a partner can become the explanation for a mood
Gilbert says she finds it harder to approach romantic relationships without cherished outcomes. Once a relationship becomes romantic, she can develop “a list as long as my arm” of things she wants. She becomes more able to feel disappointed and less able to bring an undefended heart to the relationship.
Tim Ferriss asks whether cultural stories about romance, compared with friendship, might explain the difference. Gilbert instead describes a pattern she recognizes in herself: when someone becomes her partner, she can hold them responsible for whatever mood she is in. If she feels good, the partner is the greatest; if she feels terrible, the partner is the worst. She calls this unfair.
Her five years of being single and celibate by choice have helped her see that her moods do not always need another person as their cause. Alone, she has noticed that depressions and euphorias can come and go as “a weather system that’s happening that isn’t related to anybody.” She says that during past relationships she analyzed her partners and held them accountable when she felt “kind of not right.” Then she woke up feeling that way after five years without a partner, with no one to pin it on.
The two observations meet in the question of responsibility. Resentment can reveal an expectation she had not acknowledged; a bad mood, she has learned, can feel like evidence against a partner even when it is not related to anyone. Gilbert says she hates pinning things on people and loves not having anyone to blame. Still, she admits she does not seem to know how to stop assigning responsibility once she is in a romantic relationship.