Mma Ramotswe was right: evil repaid with retribution, with punishment, had achieved half its goal; evil repaid with kindness was shown to be what it really was, a small, petty thing, not something frightening at all, but something pitiable, a paltry affair.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Forgive. This is the critical antidote to break the toxic cycle of rejection, resentment, and revenge. People who feel hurt end up hurting others. Somewhere along the line, someone has to stand up and say “the hurting stops with me.” Forgiveness is the essential first step.
— Tim Murphy, PhD, and Loriann Hoff Oberlin, Overcoming Passive-Aggression:Â How to Stop Hidden Anger from Spoiling your Relationships, Career and Happiness, p. 101
Another important reason to deepen your friendship with your lover is that you are more likely to be kind and loving toward someone you consider a friend. Friendship is an invitation to be kind and generous to both ourselves and our partners. When your lover is your friend, you understand that he or she was not put on earth just to make you happy. Your lover has as much right as you do to have personal habits and quirks. When we are truly friends with our partners, we show them goodwill and do not just expect to have goodwill shown to us.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 154
It is incredibly important, and critical to any thriving marriage, that spouses see each other as separate persons with unique goals and desires. This is not easy to do. In the first thrall of love, people tend to look for and find their similarities with each other and to ignore obvious differences. It’s normal to see the ways a new partner thinks like us and to focus on the things that bind us together….Â
After a while a new couple realizes that for all their similarities they are still different in significant ways. For many couples, this is a problematic stage, and it requires a good deal of forgiveness.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 151-152
We make an agreement with ourselves to look at our partners, as much as possible, through the eyes of love. The eyes of love reveal our partners to be wounded individuals who make mistakes, not terrible people trying to do harm.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 150
When we commit to our lovers, we implicitly promise to forgive them. There is no other way we can live with someone for better or for worse or until death do us part.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 150
I often ask people to pay attention to natural beauty instead of watching reruns of their old grudges…. The world is full of things to appreciate and find beautiful once you teach yourself to look. The forgiveness and gratitude channels remind us that even though we have been hurt, we do not have to dwell on the hurt. The one thing no one can take from us is what we pay attention to and focus on. We may have a habit of watching the grievance channel or the bitterness channel, but we still control the remote. The good news is that, with practice, any habit can be broken or changed. The world is full of heroes who have overcome difficulty by tuning in to channels of courage or bravery. Each of us can become a hero in our own life, to the benefit of our friends and family.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 142
Acknowledge that you’re going to disappoint your partner sometime; no one can fulfill all of another person’s fantasies. This may be uncomfortable, but it actually suggests that the relationship is growing, not dying. The purpose of marriage isn’t to live out your partner’s goals.
— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 95
Your ability to forgive grows stronger when you accept the gifts of love your partner offers. At the very least this means accepting that your relationship will not last forever. This also means that you should glorify any and all experiences you have of love. One way to do this is to understand that love is a precious gift and to be grateful for the fact that you were given it, even if it did not last. One of the tragedies I see in my work is people discounting past love because it did not last. They are unable to take joy in the love they shared because that love ended. I have had numerous people tell me that their marriage of twenty years was a sham because after fifteen years their partner had an affair. Their pain was understandable, but it minimized the fact that the love in their lives was majestic and a blessing no matter how long it lasted.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 135
We continue to hold our grudges when we do not keep our lovers’ goodness front and center. When we forgive our partners, we see more than just the harm they may have done. Not that they are blameless or perfect. But when we forgive them, we can see them fully enough to lose the need to punish them for their failures. When we forgive them, we appreciate their goodness so much that we can have the necessary yet difficult conversations without bitterness.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 134