Where Do We Go From Here?From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg If you are reading this line, then you have made the choice to take the journey toward healing your relationship and making it better than ever. Congratulations! Making this choice is the first step on your path to a better life, one that is free of the pain you have been suffering from for so long. The question now is, “Where do we go from here?” It is always good to review the path you are going to take before you make any journey. After all, you don’t get in your car and take a road trip without having some idea as to where you are going. By the same token, I don’t want to send you into the surgery this guide represents until you know where you are going. So let me take a few moments to give you a brief overview of the steps ahead of you. Once you have made the choice to work toward forgiving your partner, you have already entered the acceptance phase. This means you are ready to do some work on your marriage to heal the problems you are suffering from and move forward toward a relationship that is happier and healthier. Right now, you might be struggling with all this. The truth is that not all marriages work out and some offenses are too awful to imagine repairing. There can be no denying these truths. Just look at today’s divorce rates. Clearly, not all marriages end up happily ever after, and I won't misguide you by pretending they do. But in the end, only you can know whether it is time to give up on your marriage. It’s such a personal question that nobody else can answer it. Nobody else has to live your life. You’re the one who has to live out the consequences of your decisions. In your quest for an answer to this difficult question, you might seek the advice of a friend, counselor, parent, priest, rabbi, or personal physician. You might ask everyone, hoping they have some answer for you. No doubt, any of the advice these friends or trusted counselors give you will be well meaning. But no matter how much detail you give someone else about your situation, no one else can know the intimate details from inside your marriage and inside your mind, what attracted you to your spouse in the first place, or what you are willing to live with. No one is perfect, and everyone has to live with some bad traits in a marital partner. You would hope these bad traits are minor or not really substantive. Even your best friend, who has heard everything about your spouse from beginning to present, might not understand how you can put up with certain personality quirks. But then, your friend isn’t the person who has to live with your spouse. You are. Whether you give up on your marriage is a decision you'll live with for the rest of your life. Only you can know whether it is the right decision to make. You are the person who has to live with the consequences of your decision. I can tell you this. If you reach the point where you are truly ready to give up on your relationship, you most probably will know. You’ll be in so much pain and so worn out that you can tell it’s time to give up. What that point is for you, only you can tell. What this guide is designed to do is show you a path to forgiving your partner. It gives an account of the possible work you can put into your relationship to save it. If you are wondering whether you have done everything you can to help your marriage heal and make it as happy as possible, look at this guide and consider whether you have taken all of these steps. This might help you decide whether it is time to give up on your marriage. But in the end, only you can tell whether you have come to that point. Because you are buried in your pain right now, you probably can’t see this light at the end of the tunnel. But in time, with work, you will. You just have to continue to work this program. If the two of you continue to work on your relationship together, forgiveness is possible. And that’s the real key…the two of you have to work together to make this process into the healing program it can be. It only takes one person to damage or even destroy a marriage. You’ve probably realized this based on your recent experience. You had a great marriage, your partner went and did something really terrible that has affected your marriage in some serious ways, and now you are struggling to repair it. You know all too well that one person can demolish a relationship. However, it will take both of you being fully committed to putting in the work necessary to make your relationship survive and thrive. You both have to be willing to tolerate your painful emotions enough to move through the exercises in this guide, so you can move toward the bright future ahead of you. Both of you are going to face some pain as you work through your problems. In truth, there is no way to avoid that. If you have been hurt by some transgression your partner committed, you already know this because you are suffering with your painful emotions right now. Both of you have to be willing to move through this difficult time with the faith that if you do there will be a wonderful future ahead of you. 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/ |