Forgiving Ex-Spouse Can Help

THE FOUR PHASES OF FORGIVENESS

Through almost 25 years of research, Dr. Enright has developed a process of forgiveness. Those steps can be categorized into four phases.  

1.  Uncovering your anger. 
“In order to forgive, you have to realize you’ve been treated unfairly and that’s not simple or easy,” said Dr. Enright. “Admitting you’ve been affected by someone’s wrong doing and that you’re angry about it and have some mourning to do is a very big deal.” Harboring anger can have complications, such as taking our frustration out on others and losing enthusiasm for life. Resentment is a poison that can affect health. Bitterness can lead to heart problems, high blood pressure, chronic muscle or back pain, as well as anxiety and depression. Moreover, our children are hurt when we hold on to resentment. First, because we are less emotionally available and also because resentment often asks our children to chose sides. 

2. Deciding what to do about it. 
You do not need to wait for the other person to “get it” to forgive. So, are you going to keep holding onto all this resentment? Or, are you willing to change? You can divorce, confide in a friend, jog, distract yourself with pleasures and you can forgive. “Forgiveness isn’t the only way but it’s been scientifically show to be the most effective,” said Dr. Enright. Forgiveness, ultimately, is something within you that’s a moral virtue that can be given any time you want. You don’t have to wait another’s response. When you forgive, you struggle to give up your resentment and you offer goodness to the one who hurt you. It’s an act of mercy, not justice, because you’re giving someone something they don’t deserve. Reconciliation won’t come until both make a move that builds mutual trust. “By forgiving, we’re not condoning, excusing, or letting off the hook. What they did was unfair, is unfair, and will always be unfair. So, don’t forget what happened but chose to remember it in new ways,” said Dr. Enright.  

3. Thinking about your offender in a new way. 
As you work through forgiveness, you generate a sense of your offender as a wounded person who wounded you. “That’s not to condone or excuse bad behavior but to understand that when someone is acting cruelly, it is usually from a position of woundedness,” said Dr. Enright. “Still, what has happened has happened. It’s part of the historical record. Stand strong in what happened. Being compassionate doesn’t require you to repudiate justice; it does help you see your offender as having inherent worth and slowly your heart starts softening toward them. That doesn’t mean you want to be their friend or spouse, but it means you have compassion for the fact that they haven’t handled what’s happened to them very well.”  

4. Discover new things about yourself and the world. 
Forgiveness can help you find meaning to life. “What you have learned from all the suffering may give you a new purpose. Perhaps, working with children on forgiving so that when they grow up, they won’t take what happened in their family into their marriage,” said Dr. Enright. “As we have mercy on others by trying to get rid of resentment, all the while knowing what they did was wrong and standing strong by bearing the pain, we start to heal, anxiety starts leaving, depression starts leaving, and we begin seeing more clearly what right and wrong really are. Then, we stop enabling. That’s the paradox. As you focus on the forgiving and giving good to the other, you yourself are healed.”    

Failing to forgive makes us an ongoing victim. If we hold on to offenses during a marriage or harbor bitterness toward an ex-spouse while trying to find new love, we will find ourselves engaged in patterns that block our ability to give and receive love. “When we’re unforgiving, it’s we who pay the price over and over,” said Dr. Piderman. “We may bring our anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience. Our lives may be so wrapped up in the wrong that we can’t enjoy the present. Forgiveness is done primarily for us and less so for the person who wronged us. Through forgiveness, we choose to no longer define ourselves as a victim.”  

Forgiveness allows us to move on with life, rather than being endlessly mired in the junk of our past. And forgiveness is not for wimps. Extensive research shows that forgiveness involves suffering and takes time. “Forgiveness is the natural end of the grief cycle,” said Dr. Luskin. “It can be five minutes of grief because your partner put their boots down in the wrong place or five months because he lied about something important or three years of grief because he cheated on you regularly. The length of time it takes to forgive depends on the degree of the offense.”
 
So, forgiveness is a miracle of love in the face of cruelty.   


Laurie S. Moison (Hall) has written for newspapers in Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Washington, D. C. Author of four books, including "An Affair of the Mind," she has lectured nationally on sexuality, forgiveness, ethics and spirituality. She can be reached at lhall@together.net.