I'm always excited to see psychology stuff discussed here, and I like Ousterhout a lot, but I don't think this analogy works very well. Scar tissue really is p

I'm always excited to see psychology stuff discussed here, and I like Ousterhout a lot, but I don't think this analogy works very well. Scar tissue really is permanent. Resentment in a relationship can be permanent, but doesn't have to be. The analogy that every unresolved grievance leads to a monotonically increasing amount of perpetual relationship weakness is, I think, wrong. I think of resentment more like foreign bodies. When I was a kid, I got a chunk of pencil lead stuck in my hand without realizing it. The wound healed over it, but it was still in there. I could see it as a dark spot under my skin. Many years later, my body gradually migrated it to the surface and eventually it came out. (This was definitely a weird experience.) When there's some sort of grievance or unresolved conflict in a relationship, I think of it as leaving a little chunk of foreign body or poison in the person's symptom. Some amount of this is natural, and you will just build up a little scar tissue and get by. But if you keep accumulating them, they'll make you less and less healthy. Often, the best solution is to make sure the foreign body is removed before the wound heals over. When a hurt happens, take the time right then to work through it with the partner so that you aren't leaving anything in there and it can heal quickly and completely. But, if that doesn't happen (and sometimes it won't), you can still dig it out later. It just requires re-opening the wound. The longer you wait, the more painful it is. When you re-open that wound, you will feel raw and vulnerable. It requires a lot of trust and care. Sometimes, this may happen years later, but it can be done. If you find yourself doing this so frequently that you feel like you're never fully healed, that's a good sign that you aren't right for each other. Likewise, if you never feel that you're in an emotionally safe enough space to re-open those wounds and clean out the festering gunk in them, that's also a warning sign.