Using Acceptance As a Way to ForgiveFrom: Dr. Gunzburg Forgiveness. The word alone is almost overwhelming. Add to it all of the different meanings and connotations our culture and society put on it, and you end up with a puzzle so complex that most of us can’t even fully understand it. What does it mean to forgive someone? Do you have to forget in order to forgive? What if you can’t forget? What if you can’t…forgive? In my view, forgiveness happens in two distinct phases. The first phase is acceptance. This is the place where you can do some real work in your relationship to heal the pain you are suffering from right now. If you successfully work through the acceptance phase, forgiveness will happen. The forgiveness phase is the natural outcome of the work you do in the acceptance phase. Now, you should know that when I talk about acceptance, I don’t mean you should just lie down and put up with whatever your spouse does to you. I don’t mean you should be happy about what happened. And I certainly don’t mean that you should tolerate similar behavior in the future. At this point, you might ask, “Well then what DO you mean?” That’s a great question. Let me explain. A quick look at the definition Oxford English Dictionary gives for “acceptance” will help you understand what I am getting at here. The definition given there is:
Let’s consider what this means in the context of forgiveness. If you want to move toward forgiving your partner, the first thing you have to do is accept that what happened to you did in fact happen. This means getting past your initial denial and understanding that you probably won’t “just get over it.” However, while you probably won’t “just get over it,” what you can do is accept that this bad experience has become part of your history. There will be unpleasant and unwanted feelings associated with these experiences – you are not doing yourself any favors by just swallowing the feelings and pretending you’re not having them. Some behaviors are so egregious that you probably won’t recuperate from them no matter what. Sexual child abuse comes to mind as an example of this for me. But if you have weighed out the “offense,” whatever it is in your case, against staying with your partner, and you want to make this relationship work, then let’s move on to more details about how to repair your relationship. Acceptance is not about saying, “It’s all okay. It’s okay that you did what you did, and now we’re all going to be happy again.” Instead, it’s about saying, “Okay, you’ve done this awful thing, and I’ve got these bad feelings. I’m going to live with them, I’m going to deal with them, and we’re going to move forward anyway.” That’s what acceptance means. It is a choice you make – a choice to move forward toward forgiveness. You should know that it might take a little distance in time from the offense or from your discovery of the offense before you are ready to make this choice. If you choose this path, with some work and after some period of time, the painful emotions you are struggling with so much right now will diminish. I know that might be hard to believe if you are drowning in your pain right now. But in time, you can swim out of that whirlpool of emotions described earlier. You can free yourself from the grip of your difficult emotions and move toward a place where you truly forgive your partner. When you reach this point you have arrived at your goal. You have forgiven your partner, and you can move on to a happy future together. Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years. For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/ |