The Art of Forgiveness: The Key Ingredient in Every Successful Relationship

By Richard Nicastro, Ph.D.
Psychologist & Relationship Coach

Why I created an e-workbook on forgiveness and intimacy for couples:

Misunderstandings, hurt feelings and frustration are a natural part of any long-term relationship.

When not handled properly, misunderstandings fester like a malignancy that can damage your marriage or relationship.

To prevent the daily missteps from pulling your relationship apart…

…you and your partner need to create an atmosphere that fosters mutual forgiveness—an atmosphere that allows room for inevitable misunderstandings, an atmosphere that nurtures intimacy and helps you build emotional bridges that inoculate your relationship against the cumulative effects of misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

Forgiveness is a bridge that deepens intimacy;
it is a balm that heals the emotional wounds that can pull you and your partner apart.

As a psychologist, marriage therapist and relationship coach, many of the couples I work with assume forgiveness is only relevant when they are faced with the devastating fallout of an affair.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Because of this mistaken assumption, many couples fail to experience the gifts that accompany ongoing acts of forgiveness:

• Greater marriage/relationship trust;
• Feeling emotionally safe with each other;
• Increased confidence to take emotional risks with one another;
• Deeper emotional intimacy;
• Deeper physical intimacy;
• A more harmonious union.

Of course, effective communication skills are needed for a healthy marriage/relationship, but communication is only one piece of the relationship puzzle.

There are couples who divorce or separate who were actually effective communicators—they openly shared their feelings and gave one another feedback when needed. Yet despite good communication, the powerful forces of wounded feelings, intolerance and resentment pulled them apart…Why did this occur?

Because of a lack of forgiveness–love and forgiveness need to exist together.

3 Crucial Reasons to Practice Forgiveness in your relationship:

1. Without the ability to forgive, you will remain stuck in the past, weighed down by events that are no longer relevant to your relationship, but that still bother you and therefore are negatively impacting your union.

2. When you make forgiveness a regular part of your marriage or relationship, you deepen trust and intimacy, and create an energy that encourages open communication.

3. The inability to forgive prevents you from building on the strengths that already exist in your marriage or relationship. Forgiveness opens up new possibilities for you and your spouse/partner.

Here’s some information about my forgiveness workbook to help you decide if it’s right for you:

1. The Art of Forgiveness focuses exclusively on building a stronger marriage or relationship by adopting a forgiveness-mindset as a regular part of your relationship. Most books deal with the topic of forgiveness after there’s been a major relationship tragedy, like an affair. While The Art of Forgiveness does address the issue of infidelity, this workbook teaches you how to build a more harmonious union by creating an ongoing atmosphere of forgiveness.

2. It features a step-by-step approach on how to assess your current forgiveness-mindset and to build on this foundation. Did you realize that forgiveness is a learned mindset that can be made even stronger?

3.  The workbook format gives you powerful exercises that will help you and your spouse/partner build a climate of forgiveness that can lead to greater understanding and deeper intimacy.

4.   You’ll be asked the same questions and will complete the same exercises that my clients and workshop participants do. The information in my forgiveness workbook comes from witnessing first-hand what forgiveness can do for intimate relationships.

5.  You’ll learn how the practice of empathy can transform your relationship by enhancing mutual understanding and laying the groundwork for collaborative forgiveness.

6.  You’ll discover five essential tips to help you rebuild trust and get your relationship back on track after there’s been a major violation of trust.

7.  You and your spouse/partner will work toward forgiving one another for the daily blunders that are a natural part life—the daily stresses and missteps that can erode the very foundation of your relationship.

8.   You’ll discover core reasons why couples often fall into patterns of misunderstanding and conflict and how awareness of your own vulnerabilities can lead to a more harmonious marriage or relationship.

9.   The ability to create and nurture an atmosphere of collaborative forgiveness begins with self-acceptance.  You will learn about the transformative power of self-forgiveness (the freedom and wholeness that comes from  forgiving yourself).

10.  You will assess your forgiveness roadblocks in order to build a more intimate, emotionally accessible marriage or relationship.  It’s not always easy to forgive, and often there are powerful, unconscious roadblocks that stand in the way of you and your partner building a pro-forgiveness union.

The above is just a partial list of what you’ll learn in The Art of Forgiveness: The Key Ingredient to Every Successful Relationship.

Own your copy of The Art of Forgiveness: The Key Ingredient in Every Successful Relationship.

Cost: $19.95

(My 170-page forgiveness e-workbook is in PDF format and available for immediate download.)

Wishing you and your spouse/partner a relationship where forgiveness takes center stage!

Rich Nicastro, Ph.D.
Psychologist & Relationship Coach