Q & A: “How can I forgive my husband?”
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Question from Fiona in Oceanside
Fiona: I’m working on forgiving my husband for being emotionally abusive to me. I’m having difficulty doing that.
Jane: The need for forgiving someone comes from having first felt emotions such as anger, hatred or vengefulness toward him. It’s based on the idea that he has wronged you. Forgiveness implies that even though he has wronged you, you’re going to let go of these negative feelings and be either neutral or loving instead.
In this instance, you are still in the same situation with your husband, so the same feelings keep getting brought up in you toward him, which is why you can’t forgive him.
The painful feelings you are feeling as a result of your husband’s way of relating to you are caused by one or more limiting decisions* in you. The limiting decisions* could be something like you are not valuable, or you don’t deserve to be respected, or men are more powerful or more valuable than women, and so on. It is not your husband who you are angry at. It is what he symbolizes that elicits the intense emotional responses in you. And you are most likely symbolizing for him the intense emotions he is reacting to you out of.
Once you have dealt with the limiting decisions* at the bottom of the emotions he brings up in you, you will find there is nothing to forgive. And your relationship with him will probably either change, or you will find no reason to stay in it, as you will no longer be trying to heal the issues in you by getting him to change.
* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made before the age of 6 or 7 that are always some form of life is not meant to work and/or there is something inherently wrong with you.
