Why are you still upset about that? I thought you forgave me.
Are you snooping on my phone? You said you forgave me for that.
Why are you so resistant to spending time with my family? Didn't you forgive me for what I said?
Do any of these sentences sound familiar? When one partner hurts the other, the expectations around forgiveness can be enormous. And yet, none of the above issues have anything to do with forgiveness. They have to do with other factors.
It's as though your partner is angry about having to buy new tires when they just changed the oil. Both of them are a result of having driven many miles, but changing the oil doesn't mean that the tires are in good condition.
Breaking Down "Forgiveness"
When people talk about wanting you to forgive them, they're frequently talking about three very different things (often without even knowing it): rebuilding trust, healing from emotional pain, and (actual) forgiveness. These three processes in repairing a wounded relationship end up getting (incorrectly) lumped together under the idea of "forgiving," which causes a lot of confusion and difficulty for many couples. Let's break down each of those three processes that need addressing and the underlying problem for each.
Rebuilding Trust: Trust is our ability to anticipate and rely on how another person will engage, respond, or act in a given situation. We learn to trust that person by observing consistent behavior over time. Whenever someone breaches what we have learned to anticipate, trust is damaged (the underlying problem). Once damaged, trust doesn't just jump back. It typically requires a rebuilding period where we can once again see how they act and feel confident that we can rely on them.
Healing From Emotional Pain: When a relationship is damaged, we experience emotional pain (the underlying problem). Sometimes it is a relatively little pain. At other times it is enormous. Our culture often works hard to dismiss emotional pain as a "myth" or an irrelevant distraction. In truth, emotional pain (included in the broader framework of psychological distress) is incredibly important and directly impacts your personal wellbeing, job performance, and even physical health. Healing from that emotional pain means resolving those feelings so that the same reminders and thoughts don't create distress any longer.
(Actual) Forgiveness: Forgiveness is a specific process. When someone wrongs us, it creates an imbalance in the relationship (the underlying problem). The scales (think of the scales of justice) aren't even anymore. That imbalance is often wielded as a weapon to hurt the other person or as a "debt" the other person owns to guilt or coerce them. Forgiveness is the process of letting go of the incident so that the scales come back to balance. It means no longer using it as a weapon or holding it as a debt owed by the other person.
Applying The Three Separate Issues
Let's illustrate these three different components with a story.
Imagine you are riding in your friend's car. Your friend keeps looking at their phone, trying to find something to show you. You ask your friend to put their phone down and focus on driving. They insist that they aren't going to crash and go back to scrolling. They then run a red light, and your side of the car gets hit by another vehicle, breaking your leg.
Can you pick out where each of the three underlying problems has come up?
Trust: Getting in the car as someone's passenger is a fundamentally trusting action. You trust them with your life and safety when you hand over control of the situation to them as the driver. The driver's actions broke your trust to keep you safe and resulted in the accident.
Pain: A broken leg is incredibly painful. It isn't only short term painful like bumping your head getting into the car. There will be months of pain from both the break and the physical therapy that will likely be required after the bone heals.
Injustice: You were wronged. The driver's careless actions caused you harm. The relationship scales aren't even anymore. In many ways, they are in your debt; they owe you.
Each issue that has been introduced by the car crash incident is unique. That means that how to address each of those must be unique also.
Three Different Issues, Three Different Approaches
The breach of trust will likely leave you reluctant to ride in that friend's car for a long while. You may be hesitant to trust their judgment on certain things. Rebuilding trust requires that you feel confident that your friend understands why what they did was wrong and the impact their behavior. Then it will require consistent actions from them that reassure you that they have learned from this and that you can once again feel confident in how they will act.
The pain is going to require time and work to resolve. In this case, it will take time for the bone to heal and the work of physical therapy. Even then, there may be twinges or some ache when the weather is bad. Sometimes pain lingers for a little while or even a long while. The best thing that can happen here is for your friend to show compassion and understanding when you are dealing with that pain.
As for the injustice, you might make comments to your friend when you next go out like, "Do you honestly expect me to let you drive," "My workout routine has completely come to a halt because someone broke my leg," or "It has been such a pain to try to bathe with this cast on my leg. You know it's your fault that it takes me 30 minutes just to take a shower, right?" These comments intend to remind the other person of the debt you are owed, of the imbalance they created in the relationship. When we forgive, we make an active choice to balance the scales. They no longer owe us, and consequently, we cannot use it as a weapon against them any longer. We return the relationship to equal footing.
These three things are independent. You can forgive your friend and still not trust their driving. You can trust their driving and have forgiven them but still be experiencing pain. You can have fully healed and yet not trust them nor have forgiven them. They are all independent. Forgiveness is powerful, but it isn't the magic bullet for all of these things. It is an essential process for a specific purpose: bringing balance back to a relationship.
This breakdown is often surprising to our clients. For some, they are surprised at how much pressure they may be putting on others. For some, it is a lightbulb moment for why they are struggling so much. Others break down in tears when they realize that still feeling pain about something from years ago doesn't mean that they have failed to forgive.
Regardless of being surprised or not, many of these clients find that when they stop expecting forgiveness to carry the load of rebuilding trust and healing from emotional pain, forgiveness feels much less overwhelming and seems much more attainable.
For others, it still feels overwhelming to try to forgive. If this is your situation, you aren't alone. Many couples struggle with forgiveness. We frequently help couples navigate the process of dealing with forgiveness, rebuilding trust, and healing from emotional pain. If you need help, we’re here. Check out our page on Couples Counseling or reach out and schedule a free consultation to ask how we can help.
Pivotal Counseling, LLC is the leading provider of relationship and sexuality counseling to people on the northern front range and throughout Colorado and Wyoming. We help people from their pre-teen years to their post-retirement years to have happier and healthier relationships with themselves, their sexuality, and their loved ones.
