Important and practical tips forForgiving your spouse
If you are married, you probably face complexities and challenges in your shared life. Both of you may make small or big mistakes, leading forgiveness to play a significant role in improving your relationship and ensuring its longevity. However, forgiving is not always easy. Therefore, in this section of Family PlusSelMagzwe introduce tips that can help you to forgive your spouse more easily.
Why is forgiveness difficult?
Anyone’s betrayal in life can break our trust and create feelings we struggle to overcome. It doesn’t matter how the lying happens.
There could also be issues like a spouse’s addiction in your shared life, making forgiveness challenging. However, it’s better to forgive to foster satisfaction in your shared life and allow yourself to feel better.
How can we forgive our spouse and move on?
When we discover our spouse’s betrayal, it certainly inflicts a significant emotional blow, often making us feel like all our beliefs have collapsed. Enduring this pain is tough, and it brings an unexpected shock to our lives, but we unfortunately must let these problems unfold while continuing our lives.
Prepare your mind to manage these issues more effortlessly. In such situations, our minds tend to dwell on our pain, causing us to approach each step with doubt and hesitation.
We may want to forgive our spouse, but you should believe that forgiveness can bring a sense of peace to both of you.
7 Steps to Forgive Your Spouse for Their Past Mistakes
Solutions for forgiving your spouse for past mistakes:
1. Understand exactly what happened
Many of us fear delving into problems or lack the patience for it, but if you’re lucky, you can dedicate enough time for this. Try to understand everything and grasp the situation. It’s best to ask your spouse the questions on your mind to get answers.
Recognize your feelings. Be aware of your worries and anxieties, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Reflect on the aspects that led to your spouse’s betrayal. Consider both partners’ feelings.
2. Take care of yourself
Forgiving your spouse requires a lengthy process, taking a lot of energy from you. You might feel you can no longer continue in life. In such cases, a huge damage might occur in your life which couldaffect your self-esteem.This is why you must prioritize taking care of yourself.
Like a mother, attend to your own needs, remove negativity from your life, and do this for your mental health. Don’t attack anyone. Spend more time with family and friends. If you think solitude will help you feel better, definitely pursue that. Clear your mind to have a better opportunity for thinking and forgiving.
3. Change your perspective
Once you successfully pass the previous stages, you’ll be in better mental health, allowing you to seek peace without fixating on what happened around you. Think about how you now fully understand why the betrayal occurred and empathize with both yourself and your spouse.
When this happens, you’ll have the power to change your perspective, regardless of what has transpired in your life. There is always a way to shift your viewpoint.
Try to see life from your spouse’s perspective. Look for ways to address life’s shortcomings. Place yourself in others’ shoes, especially your spouse’s. Through these actions, you can begin a new chapter in your life.
4. Consider that you might also need forgiveness one day
No one is infallible. Therefore, one day you may also make a mistake. None of us are perfect. Hence, we should try to put ourselves in each other’s shoes. Surely if we make a mistake, we will wish for our spouse’s forgiveness, so it’s better to understand them a bit more.
5. Forgiveness is just a decision, not an obligation
As we said previously in Family Plus SelMagz, if you’ve been hurt, it’s entirely your choice how to react to that hurt. You can choose to hold onto anger andfrustrationand never forgive your spouse, or you can opt for the path of forgiveness. Thus, forgiveness is merely a choice, and no one can force you to do it, but this choice can help alleviate your negative feelings.
6. Manage this challenging task
It may seem unfair that someone else makes a mistake and you have to rebuild the relationship, but certainly creating a better relationship will benefit you too. To tackle this tough task, you might seek help from a family counselor or participate inmeditationclasses to regain your peace and find it easier to forgive.
7. Think about how problems can also hold positive aspects
Don’t lose hope. Consider whether the issues are worth breaking your relationship over or not. Would it be better to build your relationship and work towards it? We all understand that forgiveness takes time because you can’t recover from your emotional pain in the shortest time. Rest assured, things won’t always remain as they are because you might also slip up.
