After serving jail time for a murder she didn’t commit, Amanda Knox went on a journey of compassion, healing, and forgiveness. In the fall of 2007, a 20-year-old student named Amanda Knox was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, and living with three roommates. One was the British student Meredith Kercher. Only two months after she arrived, the unthinkable happened: Kercher was raped and murdered in the cottage where they all lived……..Continue reading…
Source: Greater Good magazine
.
Critics:
The need to forgive is widely recognized, but people are often at a loss for ways to accomplish it. For example, in a large representative sampling of American people on various religious topics in 1988, the Gallup Organization found that 94% said it was important to forgive, but 85% said they needed some outside help to be able to forgive. However, not even regular prayer was found to be effective.
Akin to forgiveness is mercy, so even if a person is not able to complete the forgiveness process they can still show mercy, especially when so many wrongs are done out of weakness rather than malice. The Gallup poll revealed that the only effective mediator was engagement in “meditative prayer”.
Forgiveness as a tool has been extensively used in such areas as restorative justice programs, after the abolition of apartheid in the truth and reconciliation process, among victims and perpetrators of Rwandan genocide, Forgiveness is associated with the theory of emotion because it draws from a person’s emotional connection with the situation. Forgiveness is something that most people are taught to understand and practice at a young age.
Forgiveness in marriage is important. When two people can forgive each other, this contributes to a happy marriage. Forgiveness can help prevent problems from growing and aid in conflict resolution. In a dating relationship as opposed to a married relationship, couples are less likely to acknowledge transgressions surrounding the relationship and more likely to forgive each other without conditions, as well as being more understanding towards their partners.
When married couples argue, they tend to focus on who is right and who is wrong. Depending on the severity of the transgression, partners may engage in different communication behaviors to seek or grant forgiveness. Merolla distinguished two types of forgiveness, conditional and indirect forgiveness, and direct forgiveness. Direct and conditional forgiveness involve discussion about the incident, where the forgiving person is straightforward and clear in telling the offender that they forgive them, usually saying something such as “I forgive you”, or “You are forgiven”.
Indirect forgiveness reflects on minimizing the conflict. With this type of forgiveness, forgivers do not make it explicitly clear to their offender that they are forgiven, but rather it is just ‘understood’. This could come from tactics such as humor, eye contact, hugging, or reverting to acting normal, or how things were before the transgression. Therefore, indirect forgiveness is less appropriate following a more severe incident that is usually followed by great hurt and anger, and more appropriate for smaller transgressions like minor disagreements or fights.
There is also conditional forgiveness, in which the offender is forgiven, but with stipulations. This could be a scenario where the offender makes a deal not to do something again that might have led to the transgression, such as drinking alcohol. In a 2005 study, researchers investigated whether forgiveness is important in a marriage, particularly if it accrues before or after an argument as well as its role in broken promises.
Researchers found six components that were related to forgiveness in marriage: satisfaction, ambivalence, conflict, attributions, empathy, and commitment. Sheldon et al. conducted a study in which they surveyed both married and dating couples on past relational transgressions, the communication strategies used to grant forgiveness, the degree of forgiveness within a specific relationship, and the ratings of relationship satisfaction.
The severity of the transgression was measured by three different factors and rated on a scale of severity. Of the forgiving strategies, five emerged and were rated on the frequency of their use. Forgiveness tendency (how likely couples were to forgive) was measured in five terms and rated on how likely couples were to agree to forgive, and relationship satisfaction was measured using Hendrick’s Relationship Assessment Scale
Which aimed to help understand how satisfied couples were with their relationship after having gone through some sort of transgression and then the forgiveness process. The results of this study showed that in married partners, the tendency to forgive was positively related to the use of minimizing and nonverbal forgiveness strategies. When it came to the severity of the transgression, the tendency or likelihood of forgiveness had no relation to any use of any given forgiveness strategy.
On the other hand, in dating relationships, the tendency to forgive was positively correlated with the use of nonverbal and explicit strategy, as was the transgression severity. Overall, this study showed that both married and dating couples who experienced similar amounts of transgressions did not differ largely in their satisfaction in the relationship after the forgiveness had occurred.
People in a relationship often believe that forgiveness means both parties must forget what had happened. When couples forgive their spouses, they sometimes need help from professionals to overcome the pain that might remain. Researchers described differences between how each individual perceives the situation based on who is in pain and who caused the pain. The act and effects of forgiveness can vary depending on the relationship status between people.
Between people who are married, friends, or acquaintances, the process of forgiving is similar but not completely the same. The researchers also came up with recommendations for practitioners and interventions to help married individuals communicate with each other, to resolve problems, and to forgive each other more easily.
For example, people should explore and understand what forgiveness means before starting any intervention because preconceived ideas of forgiveness can cause problems with couples being open to forgiving. For example, a conflict may arise if a person does not forgive their spouse out of fear that the spouse might think that they are weak.
Leave a Reply