Keys to Conflict Resolution: Forgiveness is for you

Forgiveness is an often misunderstood virtue but is also often cited as an important and effective component of conflict resolution.

While we feel angry, hurt, or offended, we often push the quality of forgiveness away. We view forgiveness as something we might bestow as a consequence of conflict resolution rather than as a means of accomplishing it. It is something we think that we could offer as a reward to our adversary in return for their willingness to compromise and, especially, apologize, but that we plan to withhold if they remain stubbournly attached to their position. “If they would only own what they did, then I could forgive them,” we think.

Though absolutely natural, ultimately none of that is the right way to think about it. In fact, forgiveness is ultimately not really about the other guy; it’s primarily about you.

Forgiveness arises from your willingness to free yourself from the array of negative feelings that may surround your dispute, from guilt, shame, or embarrassment to anger, frustration, aggravation, and resentment. So long as we are holding onto feelings like those, we limit our ability to see clearly the way not only to reconciliation (which might or might not be the final goal in every dispute), but also to virtually any kind of satisfactory resolution. So long as we carry that kind of baggage, it will always weigh us down.

Forgiveness allows us to be relieved of the feeling that we need perfect compensation. It allows us to recognize that, in fact, perfect compensation may be impossible to achieve. Even if our adversary offers a monetary reward or takes other steps to repair the ways we feel they’ve wronged us, the history is still there, the hurt was still experienced, and that cannot be assuaged by them. Our hurt, only we can heal.

Refusing to consider forgiveness also prevents us from fairly perceiving our own part in the conflict. We won’t always necessarily bear equal blame in a disagreement, but it is the unusual case in which both sides do not have some responsibility, some compromising, and some correcting, to do.

Forgiveness can be a crucial step toward having an honest perception of both ourselves and our adversary, and the real nature of, and solution to, our dispute. [Image generated by AI]