Mental Health: Forgiveness Can Help You Save Marriage or Move on after Divorce
In the classic movie “The Princess Bride,” Inigo Montoya, played by Mandy Patinkin, fantasizes about killing the six-fingered man who murdered his father. He tells everyone that he lives for the moment when he can say, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” When he finally dispatches the evil Count Rugen, he doesn’t know who he is without the hate. “Is very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life,” he says.
Revenge, whether for real or imagined injustices, can tear people apart, and there is only one remedy. “Forgiveness is the only means, given our humanness and imperfections, to overcome hate and condemnation and proceed with the business of loving and growing,” said Dr. Paul Coleman, author of “The 30 Secrets of Happily Married Couples.”
Yet, what does forgiveness mean for someone like Silda Spitzer, standing beside her husband Elliot Spitzer, now ex-governor of New York, as he was outed for consorting with prostitutes? Should she kick him to the curb for betraying his marriage vows, exposing her and their daughters to public humiliation and setting her up for the risk of sexually transmitted diseases? Or, should she honor the for worse part of her marriage vows?
Robert Enright, PhD., co-founder of The Forgiveness Institute and author or editor of four books and more than 80 publications on forgiveness, defines forgiveness as, “The freely chosen foregoing of resentment or revenge when the wrongdoer’s actions deserve it and the beyond duty act of overcoming evil with good by giving the gifts of mercy, generosity, and love when the wrongdoer does not deserve them.” Forgiveness, however, doesn’t require you tobe re-victimized. In fact, here’s what forgiveness isn’t:
1. Forgiveness is not saying what happened doesn’t matter.
Forgiveness can be difficult if the offender doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing. What happened does matter.
2. By forgiving, you are not condoning or excusing inexcusable behavior.
After all, if what happened doesn’t matter, it doesn’t need to be forgiven.
3. Forgiveness is not giving up your right to obtain justice.
Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa and author of “No Future without Forgiveness,” spent many years in jail for his fight against apartheid. After he was released, he was asked to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). While TRC sought to promote reconciliation and avoid retribution, it emphasized restorative justice. While forgiveness has nothing to do with whether our offender is willing to make restitution to us, our healing will be quicker and the likelihood of reconciliation greater if the offender shows remorse and takes actions to correct the damage he/she caused.
Hedy and Yumi Schleifer, who lead workshops to teach couples how to transform their relationships, suggest that when one spouse has hurt the other, the offended spouse lists three reasonable things the offender could do to make restitution. The offender then chooses and performs one to help heal the breach of trust.
Frederic Luskin, PhD., and senior fellow at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation and author of Forgive for Love, believes focusing on your partner’s good qualities can facilitate reconciliation. Everyone is flawed, not just the person you’re hanging out with. “Appreciate what you have and spend much more time thinking about what’s right with your partner rather than what’s wrong; because, usually, that tells a lot more of the truth. In most relationships, people are doing a lot of good things and most of that is taken for granted,” Luskin stated.
forgiveness doesn’t always mean sticking it out with a cheating spouse, though. “Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation with the person who has hurt you,” Luskin says. Dr. Enright agrees: “Reconciliation is about two parties coming together in mutual respect,” he said. If you’ve been a victim of abuse or criminal assault, it’s smart to keep the offender at a distance. Likewise, if you’re a victim of incest, you can forgive the relative, but that doesn’t mean you should leave your child with that person. To errmay be human and toforgive, divine. But sometimes it’s just stupid to forget.
According to Katherine M. Piderman, PhD., staff chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., here are some signs you may need to work on forgiveness:
1. You find yourself continually dwelling on the events surrounding the offense.
2. Others are telling you that you have a chip on your shoulder or are wallowing in self-pity.
3. Family and friends avoid you because they don’t enjoy being around you anymore.
4. You’re having angry outbursts at the smallest perceived slights.
5. You often feel misunderstood.
6. You’re hitting the bottle, smoking or taking drugs to cope with your pain.
7. You’re having symptoms of depression or anxiety.
8. If, like Inigo Montoya, you’re consumed by a desire for revenge.
9. You automatically assume the worst about people or situations.
10. You’re regretting the loss of a valued relationship.
11. You feel like your life lacks meaning or purpose.
12. You feel at odds with your religious or spiritual beliefs.
1. Uncovering your anger.
“In order to forgive, you have to realize you’ve been treated unfairly and that’s not simple or easy,” said Dr. Enright. Admitting you’ve been affected by someone’s wrong doing and that you’re angry about it and have some mourning to do is a very big deal. Harboring anger can have complications, such as taking our frustration out on others and losing enthusiasm for life. Resentment is a poison that can affect health. Bitterness can lead to heart problems, high blood pressure, chronic muscle or back pain, as well as anxiety and depression. Moreover, our children are hurt when we hold on to resentment. First, because we are less emotionally available and also because resentment often asks our children to chose sides.
2. Deciding what to do about it.
You do not need to wait for the other person to get it to forgive. So, are you going to keep holding onto all this resentment? Or, are you willing to change? You can divorce, confide in a friend, jog, distract yourself with pleasures and you can forgive. “Forgiveness isn’t the only way but it’s been scientifically show to be the most effective,” Dr. Enright says. “Forgiveness, ultimately, is something within you that’s a moral virtue that can be given any time you want. You don’t have to wait another’s response.When you forgive, you struggle to give up your resentment and you offer goodness to the one who hurt you. It’s an act of mercy, not justice, because you’re giving someone something they don’t deserve. Reconciliation won’t come until both make a move that builds mutual trust. By forgiving, we’re not condoning, excusing, or letting off the hook. What they did was unfair, is unfair, and will always be unfair. So, don’t forget what happened but chose to remember it in new ways,” Dr. Enright stated.
3. Thinking about your offender in a new way.
As you work through forgiveness, you generate a sense of your offender as a wounded person who wounded you. “That’s not to condone or excuse bad behavior but to understand that when someone is acting cruelly, it is usually from a position of woundedness,” says Dr. Enright. “Still, what has happened has happened. It’s part of the historical record. Stand strong in what happened. Being compassionate doesn’t require you to repudiate justice; it does help you see your offender as having inherent worth and slowly your heart starts softening toward them. That doesn’t mean you want to be their friend or spouse, but it means you have compassion for the fact that they haven’t handled what’s happened to them very well.”
4. Discover new things about yourself and the world.
“Forgiveness can help you find meaning in life. What you have learned from all the suffering may give you a new purpose. Perhaps, working with children on forgiving so that when they grow up, they won’t take what happened in their family into their marriage,” says Dr. Enright. As we have mercy on others by trying to get rid of resentment, all the while knowing what they did was wrong and standing strong by bearing the pain, we start to heal, anxiety starts leaving, depression starts leaving, and we begin seeing more clearly what right and wrong really are. Then, we stop enabling. That’s the paradox. As you focus on the forgiving and giving good to the other, you yourself are healed.”
Failing to forgive makes us an ongoing victim. If we hold on to offenses during a marriage or harbor bitterness toward an ex-spouse while trying to find new love, we will find ourselves engaged in patterns that block our ability to give and receive love. “When we’re unforgiving, it’s we who pay the price over and over,” Dr. Piderman states. “We may bring our anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience. Our lives may be so wrapped up in the wrong that we can’t enjoy the present. Forgiveness is done primarily for us and less so for the person who wronged us. Through forgiveness, we choose to no longer define ourselves as a victim.”
“Forgiveness allows us to move on with life, rather than being endlessly mired in the junk of our past. And forgiveness is not for wimps. Extensive research shows that forgiveness involves suffering and takes time. Forgiveness is the natural end of the grief cycle,” said Dr. Luskin. It can be five minutes of grief because your partner put their boots down in the wrong place or five months because he lied about something important or three years of grief because he cheated on you regularly. The length of time it takes to forgive depends on the degree of the offense.”
So, forgiveness is a miracle of love in the face of cruelty.
