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“Forgiveness is not just an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” – Martin Luther King
Getting to the heart of the problem
When intimacy has been lost, often we do not look deeply enough for the reasons. We are aware only of the symptoms rather than the underlying cause.
“When we first moved to London in 1985, I discovered that working for a church has more facets to it than I was trained for at theological college. In the middle of a torrential downpour, the drains that served the church toilets blocked and the alley next to our house was six inches deep in water. Together with Derek, the youth pastor, I managed to open the cover of the drains. The sewer was completely full and the contents rapidly started mixing with the rainwater. At that point, the make-up of the flood didn’t bear thinking about too carefully.
We tried to remove the blockage with drainage rods but soon realised that it was impossible to do so from above. Someone had to go down thigh-deep into the drain to use the rods at a better angle.
Before I could offer, Derek, who is one of the most selfless men I have ever had the pleasure to know, was down there, rod in hand, crouching up to his waist in the stinking water. He pushed with the rods as hard as he could, and after a few moments there was a wonderful gurgling that soon gave way to a rushing sound, which then turned into a strong sucking noise as the blockage cleared and the water flowed rapidly away. In a short time, the alley was clear. We hosed it (and I hosed Derek) down with freshwater; the smell was gone and the crisis had passed.
It would have been no good if, instead of dealing with the blockage, Derek and I had tried to mop up the surface water. The next time it rained or someone flushed a toilet, the alley would flood again.” - Nicky Lee
Looking at the ways we have hurt each other can be a painful, messy process, one that we instinctively shy away from. But when both partners summon up the courage to face the past, the results will bring lasting change. When there is a backlog of unresolved hurt and anger, we must unblock the drain by doing the following:
• Talking about the hurt.
• Being prepared to say sorry.
• Choosing to forgive each other.
This process acts like a drain, carrying away the hurt so that it does not spoil our relationship. Once we have cleared out days, weeks, months or even years of unresolved issues, we must both make a choice to resolve every big or small hurt as it happens and never again to allow such an accumulation.
For those who have been married a long time and have never felt able to address and resolve painful issues effectively, this three-fold process will take time and may be very testing, although ultimately liberating. The positive emotions may not return immediately. But as we persist, this process of healing hurt will become an ingrained habit and our marriage will change for the better.
Talking about the hurt
“Dealing with hurt is not thinking, ‘Our love for each other will somehow magically resolve any ways we hurt each other, so it doesn’t matter.’ I think that’s pretty much what I thought when we got married.
I remember vividly the first time I realised I had to say directly to Nicky how hurt I was feeling. It was after a big argument we had had about money and I felt he was accusing me unfairly. It coincided with going away for a special weekend that we had been looking forward to, and at first I tried to bury the hurt. But the result was that I felt full of resentment and self-pity, and went into a mood, which spoilt both the weekend and our relationship.
Eventually, after thirty-six hours, I couldn’t contain it any longer and I poured it all out to Nicky – he listened and really understood why I was upset, and he then said sorry.
It was at that point I realised for the first time I had to say out loud, ‘I forgive you.’ I had never done that before and I found it really hard, but the moment I did, I felt completely different. The self-pity and resentment left me, and we felt reconnected.
What I realised that weekend was that bringing the hurt out into the open and talking to Nicky about it was the way for our relationship to be restored. Rather than saying the hurt didn’t matter, I needed to acknowledge that the hurt did matter and it needed to be faced. And after that, the rest of the weekend was great because the hurt I had felt had been healed.” - Sila Lee
This part of the process is like making the decision to get into the drain. It is no good pretending that all is well. Hurt acts like those big plastic beach balls that you play with in the sea. You can, with some difficulty, push the ball down under the water for a while but then it suddenly comes shooting back up again with a whoosh when you don’t expect it.
We must tell our husband or wife when and how they have hurt us. We do not need to do it in a way that is harsh or judgmental. Indeed, the more gently we do so, the easier we make it for our partner to apologise. It is worth sharing some advice here about using ‘I’ statements. Rather than general criticism or an attack on our partner’s character, we are seeking to make our husband or wife aware of how we felt over a particular incident.
So, for example, ‘I felt hurt and rejected when you pulled away from me in bed the other night,’ is much more helpful than,‘You never show me any physical affection.’
‘I felt unsupported and unappreciated when you didn’t notice the hard work I put into decorating the house for Christmas,’ is much better than, ‘You never show any gratitude for what I do.’
‘I haven’t got over the fact that you weren’t truthful to me about that letter,’ is easier to respond to than, ‘You’re a liar and I can’t trust you.’
‘It upset me a lot when you went out to the pub the first night we got back from our honeymoon,’ is more helpful than, ‘Your friends are more important to you than I am.’
‘I felt hurt and humiliated this evening when you said I was “so slow” in front of our friends,’ is more gentle than, ‘You always put me down in front of others.’
We may feel that our partner is like a rhino, thick-skinned and short-sighted, charging around causing a lot of damage, in which case it will not be obvious to them that they have hurt us. Or we may feel that they are like the hedgehog, whose prickles have become somewhat longer and sharper. What matters in identifying hurt is not whether our husband or wife intended to wound us. One marriage counsellor put it, ‘We don’t deal with many people with a premeditated plan of “How I am going to destroy this marriage”.’
We need regular, private opportunities to deal with the ways we have hurt each other, whether in big or small ways, so as not to 'let the sun go down’ while we are still angry. Hopefully, the need will notarise often, particularly in the early days of our marriage, but it is important to have a framework in place for dealing with hurtful incidents.Sooner or later it will be necessary, even in the most harmonious relationship.
[1] Martin Luther King Jr., cited in Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 2002), p. 137.
