Your Partner Uses Your Mistakes As Leverage
Their Past Hurts Are A Trump Card Without An Expiration Date
Welcome to Love Notes For Real Life! This is my space away from the hullaballoo of social media where I dive deep into all the sticky, complex relationship topics you're struggling and puzzling over. Yes, it's a paid newsletter, but I promise it's worth it (and there's a free trial if you're on the fence)! You get weekly+ explorations, advice, and insight from me—a psychologist, high conflict couples therapist, and author. I hope you join the party!
Today I'm dropping in with an installment of my advice-column style series, Dear Dr. Marina. I'm sharing two similar questions I've recently received and responding to them together in this post.
Question 1:
What if my partner brings up the same hurt in any and every conflict, no matter how unrelated, as a trump card to silence my legitimate feelings or concerns? It’s the same script over and over again. It’s hard to have compassion and repair indefinitely when it seems my partner enjoys having something to hold over my head and is not trying to forgive and move on.
Question 2:
What if they don’t get over something for years? My partner does this and it feels like the thing I did that created the hurt becomes something unrecognizable. It feels like he wants to hold on to that and make it much bigger and much more damaging so he has a reason to lash out at me. I am so tired of apologizing and listening to how terrible of a person I am…I continue to listen and apologize but now I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for because my actions and response over the years should have shown him that I really care about him and his feelings.
This topic is complex because a few different dynamics may intersect.
First, it's normal and legitimate for people to need to talk about the same content multiple times after some sort of relational rupture. If conflict resolution and repair were as simple as hearing "I'm sorry" and just moving on, I would not have a job. Repair is often a very repetitive process, even when it goes well.
But it's also not productive to stay stuck on the same concern indefinitely. If your partner's repair doesn't reach you, there does come a point when it's time to consider whether you're actually willing to work together toward resolution. Particularly when a lot of time has passed and repair has occurred, bringing up the same hurt on repeat can become harmful in and of itself.
Plus..there's a big difference between proactively bringing up a wound and requesting more processing or action around it and reactively bringing up a wound in response to your partner's own concerns.
And, to make it more complicated, both of the readers who sent in questions sense that at this point, it's less about the actual wound and more about the position the wound allows their partner to take.
In today's Love Note, we'll discuss:
- how to assess your role in their lingering pain,
- what "holding onto hurts for leverage" may look like in practice,
- exactly what you can say in response when your partner flings an old wound back in your face,
- and how to hold onto your own experience even when theirs gets really loud.
Let's dive right in.