Recognize That Everyone Is Flawed . . . Including You

Forgiveness, Marriage, Relationships 0

The next step in this process is to honor without resentment the flawed nature of the human being with whom you share your life.  By definition, you are with someone who has significant limitations.  Unfortunately, you did not get in the line where they were offering saints, angels, personal saviors, or slaves.  You got in the line for a regular person, warts and all.  Learning to accept your partner’s limitations with tenderness is the next step of forgiveness and the opening to a true love.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive For Love, p. 99

Experiencing Life Together

Forgiveness, Marriage, Relationships 0

Three inconvenient truths make this simple and obvious step to forgiveness challenging.  The first truth is that every relationship is a risk.  The second truth is that each and every relationship will end.  And the third truth is that we can neither change nor control our partner’s actions.  All three truths point to the same message:  when we commit to someone, we don’t know what we will get or how long it will last.  Because of these three truths, every relationship will have challenges and be difficult at times.  We can’t choose whether or not to have difficult experiences — all we can do is choose who to have those difficult experiences with….

When you say, “I do,” you are choosing who you will experience these uncertainties and vulnerabilities with, not making a choice as to whether or not they will happen.  When you set up a life with someone, you are in part agreeing to experience the pains and difficulties of life with them.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 89

You Made the Choice

Forgiveness, Marriage, Relationships 0

The man or woman walking beside you is there for one simple reason — out of all the people out there, you chose this person as your partner, faults and all.  You chose to join with this person and try to make a life together.  The fact that your partner is with you only because you made a decision to invite him or her to join you is the simplest reason to be more forgiving of this person.  Your decision to choose this partner also implies that you continue to be able to choose how much effort you will make toward sustaining a loving relationship with him or her.  It is your positive exercise of choice that will be at the heart of a successful long-term relationship….

Forgiveness allows you to continue to be kind and to honor your choice even when your partner’s conduct has been poor.  It allows you to love your partner in ways that accept his or her flawed humanness.  Continuing to accept that we made a choice when we picked our lover is an ongoing affirmation that is essential in creating a successful relationship….

When we choose our mate, we select one specific person with whom to try to do our absolute best.  We promise that person that we will try to be as kind and loving as possible, and that we will practice loyalty and offer solace as needed.  We also promise to forgive our partner when we can for his or her flaws, weaknesses, silly habits, or selfishness.

To forgive, you need to understand that everything that has happened in your relationship came about because of your willing decision to join with your partner….  In this forgiveness step, you take responsibility for your decision, and once you do that, there is no one to blame when things go wrong.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 81-87

Worth the Effort

Forgiveness, Marriage 0

I hope that you also can learn to be more forgiving of your partner.  Doing this will be worth whatever effort you have to make to get there.  Even if you are able to develop a forgiving nature, however, you will still have specific offenses to work through.  But being forgiving will reduce the number of obstacles you create in your marriage and improve the pleasure of the time you spend with your loved one.

No matter how perfectly loving your relationship is, your partner will do irritating things and make choices that are potentially dangerous to your relationship.  Inevitably you will have to make decisions that may require difficult conversations.  Forgiveness will help you have more peaceful conversations and help make the difficult decisions easier to think out.  Both situational forgiveness (forgiving a specific act) and dispositional forgiveness (becoming a more forgiving person) can be practiced with specific techniques for getting over wounds and moving on.  Most of the time the health of our marriages requires only that we be more forgiving of who our partner is.  Some of our partner’s actions may require specific acts of forgiveness because the resulting wound is so deep that the grief takes time to heal.  The power of forgiveness is such that even situational forgiveness is easier the more forgiving we are in general.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 56

The Love We Crave

Forgiveness, Love, Marriage 0

Forgiving a specific wrong reduces the stress and hostility that stems from an unresolved hurt, but becoming a truly forgiving husband or wife creates a marriage that surpasses what you ever hoped it would be.  When you decide to really forgive your partner, you create an opening into a deep and sustaining love.  Experiencing and giving that deep love is what we all crave when we enter into a relationship.  That love is what we deny ourselves when we spend our lives criticizing our lovers and complaining about all the ways in which they do not measure up to our standards….

Love is what happens when you stop creating stress by arguing about the imperfections of the person you married.  That does not mean you like everything your spouse does or that you don’t talk to your spouse about things.  You are still going to have specific problems that require forgiveness, but thankfully those will be rare.  Forgiveness allows the love to flourish and to not be corroded by your resentments and complaints.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 51-52

Doing Things the Hard Way

Marriage 0

It pains me to see standers giving up the battle without a fight. They mistakenly believe that quitting is easier than standing. God has called you to stand for your family. He will not give you peace when you are disobedient to His calling. Remember what happened to Jonah when he acted in a way opposite of God’s will for him. Quitting is actually doing things the hard way. By doing things God’s way, the burden of responsibility is lifted from one’s shoulders. Let Jesus carry the load and rest knowing that He will
always be with you, encouraging you along the way.

Dennis Wingfield, “Standing Firm,” February 11, 2008, issue

Connection Is the Key

Compassion, Core Value, Marriage, Relationships 0

Just as nothing can be more important to you as an individual than remaining true to your core value, nothing can be more important to you as a couple than your emotional connection to one another.

You cannot resolve disputes with someone you love while being emotionally disconnected from that person.  The disconnection hurts too much and feels too much like betrayal.  To have any chance of finding your way out of a power struggle, you must try hard to make connection before you even attempt to solve the problem.  Your relationship has to be more important than the content of your disagreement, as does the emotional well-being of the most important adult in your life.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 298

An Essential Skill in a Successful Marriage

Forgiveness, Marriage 0

Being able to remain calm when your wishes are unfulfilled is an essential skill in a successful marriage.  If you are honest with yourself, you will agree that not getting exactly what you want from your partner is a major challenge in even a good relationship.  One reason this happens is that we experience such minor disappointments on a regular basis.  Our partners do things against our wishes every day, and even if they do what we want sometimes, it is not exactly the way we wanted.  Learning how to cope with this successfully is essential….

Forgiving your partner does not mean you have to accept everything your lover does.  It simply means you can contentedly live with your lover without getting upset every time he or she chooses to ignore your wishes.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 16-17

An Essential Ingredient

Forgiveness, Marriage 0

Think about it.  The centrality of commitment in relationships is expressed through the marriage vows, which ask us to love our partners through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, and for better and for worse until death.  That means that we promise to love them when they are not doing well, when they have failed, when life is not exactly turning out as hoped, or when we’re going through a financial reversal.  What I see in the marriage vows is a basic prescription:  if we want our relationships to last, we better be prepared to forgive.  The vows make it clear that over the life of a marriage we will experience difficulty and pain and that it is our responsibility to stay connected to our partners.  How could we possibly do this without forgiveness?  What other form of healing would clean the slate and give us fresh eyes and an open heart?

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 4

Letting Go

Letting Go, Marriage, Relationships, Truth 0

Of course my frustration was justified!  But that’s beside the point.  What kept me locked into the Gaslight Tango was my inability to accept that my husband was going to see things his own way, regardless of what I did.  If he wanted to think I was unreasonable, he would, no matter how hard I argued or how upset I got.  As soon as I understood that he — and he alone — had power over his own thoughts, no matter how right I might be, and that he wasn’t going to change, no matter what I said or did, I took a significant step toward freedom.

— Dr. Robin Stern, The Gaslight Effect, p. 192