Making Forgiveness a Part of the Marriage Preparation

Be aware of conflicts in the family of origin and anticipate future challenges.

Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Key points

• Resentments from the family of origin can tumble into a new marriage, confusing and frustrating the couple.
• Examining the injustices suffered as a child and forgiving those who offended can prevent marital conflict.
• Mutual commitment to forgive each other and to help the children forgive creates a forgiving family community.

Marriage offers a number of important protections. Research shows that married people can retain emotional and physical health compared with those who are divorced (Amato, 2000; Hughes & Waite, 2009; Scott et al., 2013). A challenge in contemporary Western culture is for people to actually stay married once they have made a lifelong commitment to each other. The divorce statistics in the United States show that about 43 percent of first marriages end in divorce (Bieber, 2024). The rates get higher for second (60 percent) and third (73 percent) marriages (Bieber, 2024).

Most pre-marital and marriage programs focus on communication with one another. For example, the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (Markman et al., 2010) teaches the couple how to communicate respectfully and resolve conflicts with one another while mutually committing to the relationship. In a review of 13 pre-marital programs, 12 of them emphasized communication training, with a particular focus on managing conflict in the transition to marriage (Carroll & Doherty, 2003). Pre-marital programs can vary widely. For example, Van Acker (2003) suggests that the couple focus on the issue of romance as a kind of glue that should keep the couple voluntarily and happily bound to one another. Moodi et al. (2013), in their pre-marital program, emphasize reproductive health, including family planning and a knowledge of genetic diseases.

What Is Missing?

While communicating accurately and respectfully is vital for a healthy marriage, also important is learning how to forgive each other, given that all people are imperfect and will let their spouse down on occasion. Learning to forgive is preparation for dealing with the injustices, small or large, that inevitably will visit marriages. Forgiving has been shown to reduce resentments that can deepen and exacerbate conflict (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). This learning to forgive should not be forced on either person but instead should be a free-will choice to examine forgiveness as a possibility and to practice it when the person is ready. I would recommend to those preparing for marriage the four forgiveness approaches described below.

1. Examining the Injustices From the Family of Origin and Others

We tend to learn much from our family of origin, including some maladaptive patterns that are consistently modeled by parents and siblings. It is unfortunate that many people go into a marriage unaware of these potentially hurtful patterns that are now brought into the new relationship. For example, suppose that a son continually witnesses his father giving verbal disrespect to his wife. The son now may criticize his new spouse for the smallest thing, such as burning the toast, or chastise his marital partner for a failure to realize that the vitamins have run out in the jar. The son is reproducing with his own spouse the verbal patterns learned from his father. At the same time, the father’s insults may have been directed frequently at the son, who now may bring his anger toward his father into the marriage. It is recommended that the spouses carefully examine the patterns of injustices that occurred in the family of origin and be aware that subsequent resentments could be brought into their marriage. The examination should go beyond the family of origin to anyone, such as a student who bullied or a coach who was harsh, who has left deep anger in the heart. As they come to know the spouse more deeply in examining such wounds, this can help them to support each other when they fail to act fairly and respectfully within their own relationship.

2. Forgiving People From the Family of Origin and Beyond

Next, having already identified those from the past who have hurt them, each member of the couple should consider forgiving them for the emotional wounds the person still is carrying in the heart. As the philosopher Govier (2002) pointed out, we can forgive people for hurting us directly (primary forgiveness) and those who hurt our loved ones rather than us directly (secondary forgiveness), as in the case of the son witnessing the father’s disrespectful communication with the son’s mother. Both primary and secondary forgiving should lessen the manifestation of the injustices in the new marriage that were directly experienced or observed in childhood. Either kind of forgiving should lessen the anger that could tumble into the new marriage.

An important starting point is to be sure that both spouses understand what forgiveness is and what it is not. The short answer is that to forgive is to be good to those who are not good to the forgiver, without excusing the injustice. Forgiving is not the same as reconciling because reconciliation involves mutual trust whereas forgiving can be a unilateral process done by only one person who is motivated to offer mercy to those who behave unjustly. Further, when forgiving, a person does not abandon justice but instead can ask for a change in the unjust behavior. Each can support the other in this forgiveness journey. One important issue here is that each spouse will be able to examine the pathway of forgiving and develop more deeply as a forgiver (see, for example, Enright, 2012).

3. Discussing the Commitment to Forgiving Each Other

With the knowledge of forgiving and its practice now well established by both people, they can commit to a forgiving marriage, in which forgiveness, along with being fair and respectful, is at the center of the relationship. In other words, each can develop the strong will to be a forgiver and to assist the other in the forgiveness journey.

4. Passing the Knowledge of Forgiveness to the Children

An important addition to the forgiving marriage is the commitment to introduce forgiveness to any children who may be born in the marriage. The point is not to pressure children to forgive but to let them see and understand forgiveness through stories and discussions in the family. Let the children be drawn to the idea of forgiving rather than seeing it as a grim obligation. In this way, all in the family will have the opportunity to try forgiving, incorporate it as part of their identity, practice it when appropriate, and be a conduit of good for others.

In Summary

Marriage preparation is not only about learning how to communicate effectively with one another or even to solve the current problems that invariably will emerge in any marriage. Instead, it is recommended that such preparation include forgiveness directed toward members of the family of origin, where appropriate, and other hurtful people from the past so that resentments can be confronted and removed in the marriage to come. Eventually including the children as students of forgiveness will help all in creating and fostering, over time, a forgiving family community.