Forgiveness is Vital

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In marriage you hurt, apologize and forgive.

Dr. John Gottman says that most conflicts in marriage are perpetual. The dictionary defines perpetual as, “continuing or enduring forever; everlasting.” Let me tell you, in my short two years as a married woman, I already feel like some of our biggest conflicts are perpetual. I honestly feel like we’re in one eternal round with them. The only word to describe it is frustrating. Sometimes it feels like taking two steps forward and one step back. Now, I’ve described a scenario that seems super dramatic and like my husband and I have serious problems. We don’t. But we do have perpetual conflict and if every couple takes a second and evaluates their marriage I believe that they will see that our marriages are similar and that Dr. Gottman is right.

Maybe this is sounding like a serious buzz kill but the best part about knowing this is knowing that it can be stopped by two powerful things, change and forgiveness. I’m saying that I still love my husband despite our perpetual conflicts because we have slowly but surely noticed them and are choosing to change and forgive.

Let me illustrate this point to you. My husband works very hard for our family. He goes to work full time during the day and then goes to school at night. He gets home and does homework after he plays with our son and eats dinner and basically has non-existent free time. I am lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mother to our son and do school online. My time is full and I don’t see as many adults as I should in the day so I crave adult conversation and attention when my husband gets home. Well, my poor husband would just like to sit down and let some steam off when he has a spare minute. In my head I totally get that but in my heart I want to let off steam talking with me and being with me, but, lets be honest, listening to my problems and my endless stories may not be the stress relief that he is craving. Therefore, he likes to play this computer game. It isn’t super bloody, gory, or violent, it is soccer game with cars. It makes me roll my eyes but to him it is the perfect thing to get his mind off of all of his responsibilities and recharge a little bit. NOW, I understand why he plays but let me tell you, I didn’t use to. I use to hate when he played. I thought he was choosing that over me. I thought he was wasting his time. I thought he was shutting me out. I was being dramatic but at the time that is how I genuinely felt.

This was a perpetual conflict in our marriage. It was tiring to constantly tell him I didn’t like him doing that and watching him stop but gradually get back into it. I’m sure it was hard for him to have his wife be upset with him every night when he was playing for sometimes only 15 minutes.

We quickly figured out that this was something we needed to talk about and more importantly understand. We needed to take the time to understand what was really bothering our partner and what the other one needed. When we understood and FORGAVE life became so much better for us.

Forgiveness is vital for any marriage. It provides the strength and capacity to move forward with new life and vitality. Elder James E. Faust said, “Let us remember that we need to forgive to be forgiven.” We mutually decided that we needed to love each other and understand each other and as such we forgave each other. We moved to a place of wholeness and understanding. We are far from perfect but with understanding even one of our perpetual conflicts we have reached a place of happiness, hopefulness and forgiveness.

I know that you can too. Just tackle one perpetual conflict at a time. No matter how big or how small it can make a huge difference in your marriage. I promise.