In this, the third of a four part series, Fred Luskin shares the importance of forgiveness in maintaining a loving relationship.

Couples forgiveness rule number one: Because of your resentments, don’t gloss over the fact that you made a willing decision to be your partner’s lover. The problem we struggle with is how much did I commit to good behavior after I made my choice of mate? Do I blame them if things turn out different than we planned or do I see risk and challenge at the heart of all love relationships? Forgiveness allows you to continue to be kind and honor your choice even when your partner’s conduct has been poor. It allows us to love them in ways that include their flawed humanness.

I remember when I did couples therapy before becoming a forgiveness teacher. I would see people like Rick and Arlene come into my office and scream at each other. Bitterness dripped from every word Rick uttered and Arlene was full of contempt. Each would hurl insults at the other and repeat story after story of grievance and disappointment. Rick would have a scowl on his face as he would tell me how hard he tried to get Arlene to stop her lying. And Arlene would look pained as he was talking, barely able to listen before she jumped in with her harsh telling of how annoying Rick is and how he is always complaining about her. I remember thinking if this is how Rick and Arlene treat the person they pledged their lives to then the rest of their social world better duck I wondered why they were not embarrassed to be treating the person they chose to love so poorly. But they certainly are not alone.

In my therapy practice and in my forgiveness classes what I see over and over is blame and hostility and then more blame. I see outright hostility, such as when Rick told Arlene that she was a bitch. I see subtle hostility as when Arlene told Rick that she felt sorry for him that he had done such a bad job of being a husband. I see a lack of responsibility from both partners such as when Arlene and Rick blame each other for their unkind and nasty behavior. Finally, I see a sense of entitlement that somehow we are owed great love without having to give it. One of my goals is to help couples like Rick and Arlene to see relationships as a work in progress rather than an entitlement.

In this, the second of a four part series, Fred Luskin shares the importance of forgiveness in maintaining a loving relationship.

Practicing forgiveness is the simple understanding that love is what unfolds when we stop resenting the person we chose to live with. Simply put, as forgiveness replaces resentment, happiness grows in your intimate relationship. The less resentment you hold towards your partner the more love you will experience. Whether you resent them for leaving the toilet seat up or for snoring each evening, the cost in love and peace is the same. Whether you resent them for something they did yesterday or five years ago, the problems it causes you are the same. The cost is always a diminished love in your heart and a greater hurt in theirs. It is a huge cost we pay when we do not know how to forgive.

The attempt to make a strong romantic partnership is an experiment in one unique kind of love. And, the divorce statistics suggest it is difficult to do. Two people with different histories and painful experiences in their past commit to help each other and love each other in a sexually exclusive manner. Each couple is made up of two people from different cultures—whether it’s family culture, ethnic, religious, or geographic. One of the things that makes getting along so difficult is because of our differing backgrounds, our ideas of what makes sense are often wrong.

Too many of us come from homes where our parents did a poor job of getting along. They quarreled often or quarreled badly. They cheated on each other or committed other destructive acts. They might have been defensive or withdrawn with each other. We watched how they acted and when we were young their behavior seemed normal. We watched how they behaved and now a generation later we find ourselves acting in the same way. Too often it did not work for them and now it does not work for us. Or, another problem many of us had was to figure out how to deal with how our parents treated us. We created habits to deal with our parents that as we grow up are either problematic or unnecessary.

In either case, most of us enter into adult relationships with unskillful patterns we got from home and then wonder why we have problems with our lovers. While we are doing that, our partner is wondering the same thing about us. This happens with people who like each other and are relatively intact. It is much worse with people who have been abused or brutalized. Whatever the upbringing, when we become partners an important step is to understand how, even in a good relationship, we each have plenty to forgive in both ourselves and our partner.

In this four part series, Fred Luskin shares the importance of forgiveness in maintaining a loving relationship. As Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects, Luskin has conducted the largest forgiveness research study to date. He has done research to demonstrate that forgiveness can work to heal a wide range of emotional and psychological issues—from severe trauma, such as the murder of a child, to dealing with the loss of money in the stock market. Luskin has taught forgiveness in corporate, academic, and faith-based settings, as well as trained therapists to use forgiveness methods in their practices. His work with thousands of couples and individuals led to his writing, Forgive for Love.

Listening to countless stories of infidelity, alcohol abuse, mistreatment of children, disregard for feelings and other causes of divorce and disagreement, I have seen first hand how difficult it is to make relationships work. In fact the dozen years of teaching and research I have done with forgiveness has convinced me just how hard it is to have loving and lasting unions. But more than that, it has shown me how essential forgiveness is and why it needs to be at the center of our intimate relationships. From a couple’s relative interest in sex, dedication to work, relationship to their parents, and relationships with their children, there are simply too many ways that a relationship can become unbalanced. Considering the complexity of life, it is inevitable we will disagree with our partners. The key is to understand the inevitability of disagreement and the need to forgive and move on with love. In that way forgiveness is an essential balm for hurt feelings.

Committed relationships are hard work, and they ask a lot of us. The triangle theory of romance says it takes passion, friendship, and commitment to sustain a relationship. Relationships falter when they have two elements but lack a third for a long period of time. If you both love and like your partner, but aren’t committed, then your relationship will likely end at some point. If you feel friendship and commitment to your partner you’ll end up with a good friend, not a lover. If you have commitment and passion, without friendship, you end up with a stormy but passionate mess. In order for your relationship to work you need to love your partner, like your partner, and be willing to stick it out through thick and thin. That is hard to do and almost impossible without regular doses of forgiveness for yourself and your partner.