When you hold things against your partner, you are imprisoning yourself in pain. Every time you think or speak of how he has done you wrong in one way or another, you are re-creating hurt for yourself.
That pain will fester. And the toxicity of that will ooze out into more and more of your life together.
I speak from deep experience here. I know how tempting it feels to harden against my husband’s “transgressions”.
There has been many a time when my husband did something I immediately held against him. Times he "omitted" the truth, went back on an agreement, "regressed" into issues I thought we'd moved beyond, said things harshly (etc!!). Many ways in which I've thought he did me wrong.
And, boy, did I used to get upset. I’ve even used the word betrayed. (I can be a bit dramatic, it’s true!)
These days, although this can still be my occasional instant reaction, I don’t hang out in the feeling that he’s turned against me. I don’t stay aggrieved. I only go there for a mini visit.
Because I have formed a habit of forgiveness. I forgive him naturally within a matter of moments.
And so I set myself free.
From hurt. From anger. From feeling against the person I most love in the world.
I give myself back feelings of peace. I give myself back the capacity to love. And to let love in.
Forgiveness used to be harder.
It used to seem like giving him power.
Letting him get away with something he shouldn’t.
Like condoning his bad behavior.
But I knew intellectually that was never the case. And that by holding onto that way of thinking about it, I was keeping myself in the bondage of victimhood. Small and hard and bitter.
I was only adding pain to pain.
And so I experimented with leaving that old imprisoning story out of the picture.
And every time I succeeded, I noticed how much better I felt.
How much quicker I felt good again in my relationship with him.
And how much easier our conversations actually solved the original problem!
Seeing this was EVERYTHING. It made forgiveness the obvious choice.
And the more I intentionally chose to forgive and bring this much better experience into my love life, the easier it came.
Now it’s simply a habit to forgive. I choose it almost unconsciously every time I feel the hardening that comes from holding things against my husband.
This is a habit of giving myself the love I want. The peace I want.
I will need to choose it again and again ever into the future.
So it’s a good thing it becomes a habit... so it starts to happen naturally!
It was worth working over the hurdles inside myself to build this habit, this muscle. It’s brought me so much more strength to love --and to be loved.
Choose this for your own self, if you want. Give yourself this most liberating loving gift—building the habit of natural forgiveness.
If you like the idea, but know help would be key in making this a reality for you, reach out to me. Coaching with me teaches you exactly how to build habit of forgiveness. It makes it easy to get all the things out of the way that keep you small, aggrieved, and stuck in resentment.
When we coach together, you’ll develop a whole host of naturally love-promoting habits that, once ingrained, make it easy to have the mutual support, connection, lightness, effective communication, and loving authenticity you deeply want with your partner! To take the next step, schedule your free consult call here.
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