Yes. A marriage can recover after years of resentment. It requires both people to stop keeping score and start making deposits, and it requires at least one person to go first.

Resentment feels like evidence. After long enough, it begins to feel like the truth of the marriage: this is who we are now, this is what we have become. The score is settled in each person’s mind and both sides have a solid case. As long as both people are making the case, nothing changes.

The shift comes when someone decides that being right is no longer worth more than the marriage.

That is not weakness. It is the hardest thing in the room, to lay down a case you have been building for years and ask: what do I actually want? Most people, if they are honest, want the thing that existed before all of this. They want to feel safe with each other again. They want to come home and exhale. They want to be known.

The Love Without Limits framework calls this Be the Change. Take 100 per cent responsibility for who you are being from this point forward. Not responsibility for everything that went wrong. Responsibility for who you show up as from today. You stop waiting for your spouse to go first and you make a deposit. Then another. Resentment cannot sustain itself in a full account.

Christine and I have sat with couples who came in carrying decades of accumulated grievance and came out the other side of it. Not because the grievances were not real. Because both people chose something different.

The 85 to 90 per cent of couples who do this work and see it start to move within 7 days are often the ones who came in most convinced it was too late.

If you have been carrying resentment for years, book a free 15-minute call. Tell us where things are. We will be honest about what is possible.

How long does it take to recover from years of resentment? Longer than you want and shorter than you fear. The resentment dissolves as the account fills. Most couples doing the work feel movement within days to weeks. The direction changes much faster than most people expect.

Can a marriage survive if only one person is trying? Yes, up to a point. When one person changes their being state and makes consistent deposits, the dynamic often shifts even when the other person is not consciously trying. One person going first is how most recoveries begin.

Is couples counselling necessary for recovering from resentment? It often helps to have a third perspective that can see what both people are too close to see. The work can be done without it, but having a guide who knows the terrain shortens the journey considerably.

How do I know if it has been too long? Almost never too long. The couples who struggle most are usually the ones who decided it was too long and stopped trying. The ones who recover are the ones who ask the question and do something with the answer.