Resentment

Resentment: The Relationship Killer

There is a thin line between love and resentment.

Resentment is the quiet cousin of hate—slow, corrosive, and patient. It doesn’t explode. It festers. It collects wounds like relics, a silent testament to the one who caused them. Sometimes, the person who holds it doesn’t even realise they’ve been carrying it. Doesn’t realise that the sting of the same old wound has burrowed so deep, it’s begun to wear down to bone.

I’ve felt that quiet ache—for someone I loved. And I’ve felt it from them, too.

If hate is a bullet—hot, quick, sharp—then resentment is a parasite. It doesn’t kill fast. It lingers, hollowing out its host until the very sight of what once was love becomes unbearable. It’s a sickness, really. Especially because it often forms in the wake of our own perceived failures. Failures reflected back at us by those too close for comfort—a lover, a friend.

I’ve never been a casual person. My relationships are all-consuming, full-throttle, fifty shades of full-on. Because I love deeply. I reserve that love for those who matter most. But that intensity comes with a cost—it means I hurt deeply, too. It means I often find myself on a tightrope, loving people who may not be walking the same line.

This became painfully clear as I transitioned from adolescence into adulthood.

I am not who I was at seventeen. I couldn’t be, even if I tried—and I did try. Because the bonds I’d formed in those years, the ones I thought would last forever, began to crumble.

And breakups—romantic or platonic—are brutal.

As someone who loves wholly and selectively, when someone leaves, they don’t just walk away with their half. They take a large part of mine, too. And I began to see something in the eyes of a friend. A shadow. An ache. A distance.

I’m not the same person I was when I was 17. So, I wasn’t the same girlfriend when I was 21. It would have been easy if I was. Comfortable. Thinking you’ve got it all sorted out and can focus on the other checkboxes life throws at you. Job, House. Money. But you can’t force compatibility. And it didn’t make either party inherently bad that we no longer liked the same things or that we communicated in different ways or expressed affection through different means.

But that didn’t stop it feeling that way at the time. Resentment. Cultivating in the ashes of what had once looked like a future. We disliked each other for not being right for each other. Because it sucked. Because it felt like we’d wasted years of our lives. Because it was our first relationship – because we were children, and maybe we didn’t know what love was, but we knew it wasn’t that.

Resentment.

I know that now. I know it every time I look at my partner and feel peace. Stillness. Understanding. Welling with so much love it’s dizzying. I know it when I’m with my best friends—the ones who celebrate my wins with silly cards and relentless pride. Who tease me, love me, and make me feel safe. Who remind me that my joy doesn’t need to come riddled with guilt.

Guilt. Shame. Those were the side effects of being resented. They crept in quietly, growing stronger as a friend’s feelings toward me shifted. I started to question every decision, every instinct—filtering them through her gaze.

She’d gush about her other friends. And when I felt inferior, like I’d been listening to a partner praise their ex, I told myself I was imagining it. That I was overthinking. Why would someone I’ve loved for years try to make me feel small?

But slowly, the truth surfaced.

We had the same dream. That’s how it all started. We wanted to write. To be authors. As teens, we fantasised about joint book tours, traveling the world together. Wild, beautiful dreams—half play, half prophecy.

Best friends.

And I was with her when I got the email—the email that changed everything. My book was really, truly going to be published. I remember the moment: I looked up from my phone, beaming—and saw her face fall. And for a moment, I told myself I’d imagined it. I’m sensitive, I reminded myself. But no. I know better now.

Because from there, it unravelled. Her promises of support became silence.

Eventually, after months of feeling like I was shrinking under her gaze, I stood up for myself.

And she told me she didn’t want to be my friend anymore.

My heart broke. Because I had hoped—desperately—that one day she’d see it. That the small jabs, the absences, the coolness had meaning. That she’d apologise. But no. Even if she wanted to love me, wanted to support me—she couldn’t. Because resentment had struck her like an illness.

So, when my dream came true—when I launched my novel at my dream venue—she wasn’t there.

Not in the audience. Not afterward, when I stood at the threshold of everything I’d worked for, aching for someone who had once held that dream with me.

That night wasn’t just the beginning of my career. It was the quiet funeral of a friendship. And still, some part of me searched the crowd. Hoping, maybe, she’d appear—tearful, proud, ready to say she’d been wrong.

But resentment doesn’t allow for those kinds of reunions.

It calcifies what was once soft. Builds walls where there once were bridges. And when that long-awaited moment finally came—the one we’d envisioned as kids—the absence was loud.

And I realised that some people love you until you become a mirror. And when they don’t like what they see reflected back, they turn away. And it’s no ones fault, no one’s evil. It’s just part of growing up.

And still—I’m grateful. Grateful for the dream we once shared. For the years of laughter and imagined futures. Even for the ending—because it taught me something I didn’t know I needed to learn:

That real love—romantic or platonic—doesn’t feel like walking on glass. You don’t have to shrink to be worthy of it. You don’t have to carry someone else’s discomfort like a debt. Success shouldn’t feel like guilt and someone else’s success shouldn’t feel like failure. We all learn that some time. And when we do, we learn to let go of that quiet ache. That self-sabotage. We self-soothe, bandage our wounds, and keep on keeping-on.

That’s life. And the love that remains in that release, endures. It holds on. And it shows up.