A Gift, However Temporary

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Healing, Love, Marriage 0

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

Discontent Fuels Growth.

Life, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

Discontent is what fuels growth — in marriage, in oneself, and in institutions.  It’s what propels you to come up with creative solutions and to seek novelty and change.  Merely accepting this represents a huge step in keeping a marriage alive and frees you to move onward, out of the dark side.

— Ellyn Bader and Peter T. Pearson, Tell Me No Lies:  How to Stop Lying to Your Partner — And Yourself — In the 4 Stages of Marriage, p. 81

Love Rests on Choice

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Real love can emerge only when there is choice.  If Sam is obliged to treat Carly exactly as she demands to be treated, then what is there for Sam to do but follow instructions?  If Carly gets to make all the decisions, then Sam is not really a full partner.  It is only real choice that allows romantic love to flourish.  Jack can tell Jill he will love her for the rest of his life, but he still has to wake up every day and do so.  If she hovers over him and rates his love for her by the hour, it will quickly be extinguished.  Jack will get tired of the judgments and the pressure to perform.  We cannot be forced to love.  As much as choice is a responsibility, it also provides the freedom to love and care and forgive.  The risks we take when we choose to love one particular person and the resulting uncertainty are the ground upon which true love emerges.

How remarkable is it that your lover continues to spend time with you, listen to you, and try to make your relationship work of his or her own free will?  How wonderful is it that you lover continues to have sex with you and to parent your children?  Your lover’s devotion and willingness to plug away day after day when there are sleeker and newer models to meet is a blessing.  We need to let our lovers know how amazing they are and how grateful we are.  We need to make offering gratitude a priority in our lives and in our marriages….

When you feel grateful for your lover, you are able to feel forgiving toward him or her.  Forgiveness is a positive emotion that can actually restore some of the damage done to your body by anger and stress.  When you are focused on your problems and grievances, your body is under stress.  Your stress chemicals are active, and you feel tired and beaten down.  You blame the offender for your distress and feel disempowered.  Feeling grateful and forgiving can wash away the stress and relax your body and mind.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 132-133

Vulnerable to Goodness

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Love, Marriage 0

When our lovers offer us goodness or kindness, it is because they choose to do it.  They don’t have to be good or kind, and their gift is the fact that they made those choices when they did not have to.  Human nature is often selfish and insensitive, but we are all capable of also being remarkably generous and kind.  In most marriages, the spouses offer each other more good than bad, but too often we take the good for granted.

The hard truth is that at this very moment your lover could decide that you are not worth any further effort.  You have no power over the decisions your partner makes, and demanding something that he or she does not wish to give is an unenforceable rule.  Our vulnerability to our lovers’ whims makes forgiving them hard, and that is what makes relationships so difficult.  Once we have been hurt, we fear that they could hurt us again.  We worry that they might not change for the better and could even change for the worse.

The overlooked upside is that we are vulnerable to their goodness as well.  And once we start to look, we realize all the good our lovers do.  At the end of the day, the only thing we have power over is how much we ourselves do to help the marriage; we cannot control our lovers’ actions.  The best thing we can do is to use our power to appreciate our lovers so that we have many reasons to forgive them their trespasses and flaws.  You can dramatically improve your chances for success in your relationship if you simply give thanks for being loved numerous times each day.  Try to notice the little things your lover does every day to make the relationship work.  Be thankful for every day he or she tolerates you with all your quirks and wounds.  You want to see your partner’s goodness and forgiveness and honor the effort he or she makes to care for you.  Try to notice your lover’s strengths and good points and kind actions as often as possible.  Tell your lover how lucky you are that he or she chose you for a partner and continues to choose you every single day.

Your marriage will also be helped if you appreciate the gifts of your life together.  Be proud of your home and revel in the bounty of food and clothing and shelter you share.  Honor the achievements of your children and praise your partner for his input and effort.  It is important to realize the preciousness of life and never take it for granted.  Waking up next to a person who loves you is a blessing, so don’t just rush by it.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 130-131

Misplaced Attention

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The thing that cripples relationships is focusing more on their flaws than on their loving or their goodness.  This misplaced attention makes no sense and underlies many of our difficulties with forgiveness.

Every spouse has enormous good to offer the other one; when we don’t pay attention to those gifts, we can kill the marriage.  We ignore the endless piles of laundry she cleans and folds, the jobs he goes to year after year, the ongoing effort she makes to tolerate our flaws.  Our anger blinds us to the ways in which our partner overcame his childhood difficulties to be a productive person, her simple dignity in how she acts under stress, or what a loving father he is.  We miss both the small indications of love we regularly receive and the larger moments that sustain our lives.  The list of our lover’s good qualities is endless and limited only by our effort and imagination.  We take our lovers and relationships for granted and do not notice our blessings until something goes wrong….

Love suffers when we focus on our partners’ difficult traits and problematic behaviors to the exclusion of their beauty and goodness.  We accentuate our painful experiences when we focus our attention on difficult traits.  By focusing on what is wrong, we immediately put stress into our bodies and minds.  By taking our partners’ good qualities for granted and focusing on their errors and flaws, we create more stress in our lives and relationships….  What brings love to our relationship and sows the seeds for forgiveness is simple:  appreciating absolutely everything we can about the person we are with each and every day.  There is nothing simpler to do, and no more powerful gift you can offer to your partner.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 128-130

Challenging Unenforceable Rules

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go, Love, Marriage 0

Once you’ve identified your unenforceable rule, you need to figure out how to hold on to the enforceable desire and get rid of the unenforceable demand.  Hoping that things will go the way you want and working hard to get your wishes gratified is a good approach to your relationship.  At the same time, remind yourself that you cannot control your lover’s behavior, and it is foolish to demand things that your lover isn’t willing to give.  Try substituting the words “hope” or “wish” for “must” or “have to” in your unenforceable expectation or demand.  This will help you to avoid driving yourself crazy and retain the energy to maximize the relationship you have….

Challenging your unenforceable rules lets you take responsibility for your feelings and helps you take your partner’s quirks less personally.  You become aware that much of what you took personally about your partner’s behavior was only rules you could not enforce.  You remember that you love your partner, not the things you are demanding from him or her.  Once you do this, you can see that your thinking played a significant role in the anger and hurt that you felt.  As you challenge your rules, you will see that clearer thinking leads to more peaceful coexistence in your marriage and day-to-day life….

Notice that when you wish or hope that things will be a certain way, you think more clearly and are more peaceful than when you demand that they be a certain way.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 121-123

The Pain of Broken Rules

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The problem comes when we forget that what we hope for is not the same as what we need or have the power to compel.  Unenforceable rules warp our judgment.  We try so hard to get our rules obeyed that we do not see the damage that ensues from that effort.  We blame our lovers for breaking our rules, and we withhold our love when they do so.  Our pain and frustration cause us to do things that harm our relationship rather than help it….

The first step in unraveling your unenforceable rules is to recognize them.  When you finally realize that you are making unenforceable rules, you are taking the first step toward helping yourself.  Simply by doing this, you have taken back some of the power you gave your spouse to hurt you.  This is true whether your spouse failed, or was selfish, or stood firm defending his or her quirky behavior, or loved you wrong, or forgot your birthday.

When you challenge your unenforceable rules, you take the next step in learning to forgive.  The good news is that challenging unenforceable rules is a simple process.  Unenforceable rules make their presence known.  You do not have to look far to find them.  Every time you are more than mildly upset with the actions of your lover, it is because you are trying to enforce an unenforceable rule.  Every time you are more than mildly upset with your life, it is because you are trying to enforce an unenforceable rule.  Every time you are more than mildly upset with yourself, you are trying to enforce an unenforceable rule….

What you need to realize is that underneath your most painful feelings are rules you are helplessly trying to enforce.  Once you start to challenge your rules when you first feel upset, then your bad feelings won’t last and will not be as severe….

None of us have the ability to force our lovers to comply with our demands, and therefore they often break our rules.  It can be difficult to accept the fact that your lover does not have to make your life easier or better or lessen your suffering when you want him or her to.  You will only suffer more, however, when you try harder to enforce your unenforceable rules than challenge them.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 116-120

Unenforceable Rules

Forgiveness, Life, Marriage 0

Nearly all relationship problems begin when our partners break an unenforceable rule.  Your frustrated attempt to enforce such a rule is at the root of your anger toward your loved one.  Feelings of anger, helplessness, or depression are all indications that you are trying to enforce something that cannot be enforced.  Your anger is telling you that things are not working out the way you want them to.  These situations are painful because you are not able to control them, even though you try over and over to do so….

If most of your partner’s actions cause you a good deal of emotional distress, you may be trying to enforce an unenforceable rule.  We cling to our unenforceable rules and refuse to accept our partner’s mistakes, flaws, and disagreeable traits, thinking that we should not have to put up with them.  This is like clinging to the anchor of a ship you fell off of.  As you gasp your last breath, you’re still complaining that the anchor was there to keep your boat safe, and damn it, dragging you to the bottom of the sea isn’t helping.  The anchor is wrong.  It hasn’t read the anchor rulebook and doesn’t know the right way to do its job….

When you try and fail to enforce one of your unenforceable rules, you become angry, bitter, despondent, and helpless.  Trying to force something that you cannot control to go your way is an exercise in frustration.  You can’t force your spouse to love you or to stop cheating; nor can you force your kids to treat you respectfully.  The more unenforceable rules you have, the more likely you are to feel agitated and disappointed with your marriage.  When you cling to unenforceable rules, you leave yourself open to pain every time one of them is broken.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 111-112

Openness

Forgiveness, Marriage, Truth 0

You still need to be open with your partner about the things he or she does that are hurtful, offensive, or selfish.  You don’t have to be a martyr about it.  A strong, healthy relationship needs open communication, and letting your partner know how he or she is hurting the relationship is necessary for things to improve.  The important thing is to forgive your lover before you initiate that talk.  Then you can talk openly and pleasantly, without anger….

Forgiveness does not solve every problem.  But it does reduce the intensity of emotional distress so that our problems can be talked about and solved if possible.  Blaming our partners for not being the person we want them to be creates anger in both us and them.  This anger causes stress.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 105-107

What Would a Perfect Person Want With Us?

Compassion, Forgiveness, Marriage 0

I am trying to remind you to be humble about your own flaws and to remember that you too regularly require forgiveness.  If you want a successful relationship, you need to be gentle with the inevitable flaws of your lover.  I also want you to understand that dealing kindly with the mistakes and wounds of your partner is how you open yourself up to true love….  Coming home to a passionate sex partner who was also a great cook, hard worker, high wage earner, good communicator, and all-round fabulous person would be great.  The problem with that scenario is twofold.  First, what would such a perfect person want with us, and second, how would we learn to really love if our needs were always met with a smile?  It is easy to love those who never test us because they are always giving and never in a bad mood.  It is difficult to love real people because they ask us to give and give and forgive and be humble….

There must be something we need to learn from our partners’ weaknesses and our own weaknesses.  It may be that when we love our partners in a way that includes their differences and flaws, we go deep enough to create an enduring partnership.  When we are cruel and dismissive about our differences and our partners’ weaknesses, we impose our fantasy of how a lover should be on a live human being….  Forgiveness emerges once we accept the challenge of loving the real person we are with.  Only then can we begin to develop a deep and lasting partnership.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 105