Secondhand Resentment: When You’re Angry on Behalf of Your Partner (or They’re Angry for You)
Wednesday, June 4, 2025.
You’re not mad for you—you’re mad for them. And it’s ruining dinner.
You don’t just hold your own feelings. You carry theirs too. You’re angry at their boss, their mother, their ex. And maybe even at them—for not being angry enough themselves.
This is secondhand resentment.
It’s what happens when empathy turns into ownership. You absorb your partner’s pain and wear it like armor, even when they’ve put it down.
Secondhand resentment is a stealth phenomenon in intimate partnerships.
It doesn’t look like anger at first. It looks like protection.
You’re just “looking out for them.” Just “making sure they don’t get walked on.” Just “feeling what they won’t let themselves feel.”
But over time, the protective instinct curdles. You get snappish on their behalf.
You start explaining their feelings to them. You carry their wounds like evidence in a trial no one asked for. And you start resenting them for not being as outraged as you are.
The Science of Resentment by Proxy
Research in emotional regulation reveals that secondhand resentment is a form of vicarious emotional labor.
Reeck et al. (2016) describe how people often regulate others’ emotions to maintain social equilibrium—but it can backfire when the effort isn't mutual.
Empathic distress—especially in highly sensitive, codependent, or neurodivergent spouses—can lead to internalizing a partner’s pain and reacting as if it’s your own (Batson et al., 1997).
Attachment theory gives this a deeper lens: anxious attachers often feel compelled to manage or amplify their partner’s emotional life to secure closeness (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016). It feels like advocacy. But it can also become intrusive.
And as van der Kolk (2014) reminds us, unprocessed trauma doesn't just live in the body—it tries to find a stage.
Secondhand resentment becomes that stage, where unspoken injustice gets reenacted daily.
American Culture: The Good Ally Syndrome
In a culture obsessed with advocacy, we’ve confused being supportive with being emotionally over-invested.
American couples—particularly liberal, therapy-informed ones—are trained to treat empathy like a skill set. But without boundaries, empathy becomes colonization.
One partner becomes the spokesperson for the other’s unspoken pain.
This especially tends to show up in mixed-neurotype couples, interracial couples, and those with gendered power imbalances. One partner “takes on” the oppression—and then gets mad that the other isn’t processing it fast enough.
It’s not always solidarity. Sometimes it has a semblance to emotional gentrification.
Signs You’re in Secondhand Resentment Mode
You feel more outraged than your partner about what happened to them.
You repeatedly bring up their past pain—even when they’ve moved on.
You get angry at them for not being more angry.
You say things like, “I just can’t believe you’re letting them get away with that.”
You start policing how your partner feels, reacts, or forgives.
What It Feels Like on the Receiving End
You feel steamrolled in your own emotional process.
You don’t feel safer—you feel scrutinized.
You wonder if you’re too “soft” because you’re not as reactive as they want you to be.
You start minimizing your feelings so your partner won’t blow them out of proportion.
What Helps
Self-Differentiation: Borrowing language from Bowen theory, you need to define where your partner’s emotions end and yours begin. Fusion isn't empathy—it’s enmeshment.
Delayed Response: Practice saying, “Let me ask them how they feel first,” instead of jumping into protection mode.
Somatic Tracking: Notice where your body stores their tension. Whose clenched jaw are you clenching?
Compassionate Detachment: You can bear witness without becoming the hero. Love doesn’t require reenactment.
Relational Autonomy: Let your partner narrate their own pain, in their own time, with their own language.
Final Word
Secondhand resentment is a love language written in capital letters. It wants justice. It wants repair. But it often skips consent.
If you’ve been carrying your partner’s pain like it’s your own, consider setting it down.
Ask if they still want you to hold it. And then, hold them instead.
Because love isn’t a courtroom. It’s a sanctuary. You don’t need to prosecute to protect.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Batson, C. D., Fultz, J., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1997).
Distress and empathy: Two qualitatively distinct vicarious emotions with different motivational consequences. Journal of Personality, 55(1), 19–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1987.tb00426.x
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016).
Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Reeck, C., Ames, D. R., & Ochsner, K. N. (2016).
The social regulation of emotion: An integrative, cross-disciplinary model. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 47–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.09.003
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014).
The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.