October 21, 2009: I Hurt My Partner: How Do I Forgive Myself?
“Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.”
Self-Forgiveness – the act of accepting and loving your whole self is not an easy task, especially when you have hurt your partner. Letting go of self-blame, guilt, anger and regret means acknowledging and facing your flaws, mistakes and failures. It means understanding that you’ve made poor decisions, that you are “not so nice,” that you have hurt the person you love the most. And it means believing that you deserve to be forgiven. Loving yourself enough to embrace self-forgiveness can be challenging.
Choosing Self-Love, when you have been beating yourself up, is like learning a new habit. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Face what happened head on.
- Take ownership and tell your partner you accept full responsibility.
- Allow your partner to express their hurt and pain; just listen.
- Apologize and ask for forgiveness.
- Ask yourself for forgiveness and remember your intent was not to hurt.
- Discuss how you can make amends and follow through.
- Allow yourself, your partner and the relationship time to heal.
- Find the “learning” in the experience and use that to move your relationship forward, to an even deeper place.