77. How to Forgive Your Partner

Meet the Host

Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.

Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your relationship and responsibilities teaching you how to stop arguing and have more sex. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.

In this week’s episode, we talk about what forgiveness looks like and how you can start to use forgiveness as a tool to help you alleviate the hurt, resentment, and thoughts you have. 

Because forgiveness is not about them. Forgiveness is about you. Forgiveness is a tool to alleviate the pain that you're going through, the betrayal that you feel, the hurt that you feel. Forgiveness is a tool for you. Forgiveness allows you to surrender everything.

Forgiveness is the medicine that your spirit needs in order to move on in your relationship. Let’s talk about how you can use forgiveness to work with the desire to rebuild trust in your relationship and take action toward that.

Whether you're in a long-term relationship or simply interested in what relationships go through, then know that this episode will offer valuable insights to inspire hope in even the darkest times.

Click the link to listen below and email me back with your thoughts, I want to hear from you!

If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to work with me during this season of your life, then I invite you to book a sales call below. 

During the sales call, you will share what is going on in your life, what you have tried so far, and how I can help. I can't wait to meet you, chica.

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Episode Transcript:

Karina: Amigos, como estan? Welcome back to this beautiful podcast, Relationships You Understand, hosted by me, your host, Karina F. Daves, relationship coach and speaker. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to forgive your partner. Now, as a relationship coach, I've worked alongside many couples and also individuals that I work with that are in relationships.

Single, divorced, dating. And one of the biggest things that people struggle with is how to forgive, whether that be not just their partner, but how to forgive a loved one, somebody that they deeply trusted, somebody that they deeply confided in.

Today we are talking about how to forgive your partner. It is one of the yuckiest feelings to feel betrayed, to feel disrespected, to feel lied to, to feel like. You know, somebody isn't loyal to you. It just doesn't feel good. Right. And what I want to share today are some key things about forgiveness that I really want you to start to understand so that you can make better decisions in your relationship, that you feel like there's something happening that requires possibly you forgiving, right?

All right. All of my podcast episodes are under 30 minutes because I don't have time for more than that. And again, I just want to thank you for coming back for another week to relationships. You understand hosted by me, Karina F. Dave. So here we go. Okay. In order to forgive, it's important to talk about what it is and what it means.

And so these are my three points that I want to help you as you're trying to decide whether or not you should forgive this person that you love or your partner. Number one, I want you to recognize that forgiveness is a choice. Okay. Nobody, literally nobody can force you to forgive somebody. Forgiveness is a choice that God has given us free will to do or not to do.

So even if somebody You know, ties your hands and tells you that you need to forgive and forces you to forgive. You can say you forgive, but forgiveness is in the heart. Amen. So I want you to know that forgiveness is a choice. You have every single right to or to not forgive. It is completely to you. And what happens when it is time for you to forgive is that your brain is going to go through a carousel of reasons of why not to forgive.

And it's very important that you know this. Okay. I'm going to say that again, when somebody lies to you, let's just give that as an example. And it requires you hearing them out and moving past it, it is going to require you to forgive them. But your brain will first go through a very long carousel of why not to forgive them.

In your brain, it will go through a memory log of past times that they possibly could have committed the same action. In this case, lied. So your brain will think, have they lied to me before? Boom. Have they been disrespectful before? Boom. Have they kept something from me before? Boom. Do they show other signs that they could be disloyal?

Boom. Hey, they told me that they go to work at seven, but I don't really think that that's true. Like boom, your brain is going to go through a carousel of reasons why not to forgive this person. That process that your brain goes through is completely normal, but also very important that you know that it's going to happen.

Number two, the second thing I want you to know about forgiveness is that forgiveness Forgiveness is not about letting your partner off the hook. Sometimes we perceive forgiveness as Like, forgiveness isn't just, you know, letting them off the hook.

It doesn't mean that you accept what they did. There is a big difference between accepting and approving. Okay, when you forgive somebody, you are accepting them as an individual because God accepts them. You see them for who they are. You see them for their faults. You see them as a person that you love and that you care for and you accept their presence in this world.

You accept that. However, you do not approve of what they did. There is a big difference between acceptance and approval. And forgiveness is not letting the person off the hook for what they did. It is simply saying, okay, I see what you did. I don't approve of what you did, but I'm going to accept you for where you're at.

Now, many of you may be thinking at this point, but they cheated on me. This is something that many of my clients struggle with, okay? Which is that their partner betrayed their trust. Now, when you forgive somebody for cheating on you, you are not letting them off the hook for cheating on you. What you are saying is that I see that you cheated on me.

I hear that you cheated on me. I have heard your reasoning for cheating on me. I accept the fact that you, you know, now are sharing it with me. I accept the fact that you say that you love me. I accept all of that, but I don't approve of what you did. Now, this is where, especially with cheating, let's talk about it.

Many of us get forgiveness confused. What I want you to understand is that if you are with a partner that has cheated on you and you decide to stay with them, It doesn't mean that there are not consequences for. That cheating now, let me just explain a lot of this because it's it gets a little bit muddy So hear me out the consequence may be you will now have to rebuild Trust again in your relationship the consequence may be that I may now be insecure about my body or insecure about if I'm enough for you.

That is a consequence that happens from the thing that you did that I don't approve of. But if I decide to stay with you, now this is the second part. If I decide to stay with you because I choose to forgive you, because I have the free will to forgive you, Okay. I want you to understand that if you are staying with this person and they cheated on you and you accept them as a person, but you don't approve of what they said, and you've decided to forgive them, you cannot be the person that holds them accountable.

This is something that I know is very difficult to comprehend, but I'm going to try to explain it. If you decide to stay with your partner who has cheated on you, It is not your part or role to hold them accountable for their actions. The only thing that you can control is taking accountability for your actions and what you will do moving forward.

For example, if your partner betrays your trust again, it. It is only up to you to hold yourself accountable for your next move, you understand your partner has to do their own thing has to do the work to rebuild the trust. Yes, to, you know, talk to you during the moments where you feel insecure, but that holds accountability thing, clocking them where they're at.

And having them needing to tell you, you know, who they're going to be with and at what time and what activity and basically, you know, tracking them. That is not your job to hold them accountable. Do you understand me? It will burn you out. If you do that, and it will keep you from truly forgiving your partner, your partner will feel like they are constantly under investigation.

And instead, what happens is that your relationship, the theme of your relationship and the basis of your relationship is founded. On making sure that you feel good, that you feel like I'm not lying, that you feel like you can trust me, that you feel like I'm not with anybody. Like that's fundamentally what the relationship turns into.

And you don't spend any time rebuilding trust there. You are not going to rebuild trust with your partner because you track. You are not going to build trust with your partner because you check their phone and look at their text messages. You are not going to rebuild trust with your partner because they tell you everywhere they go and who's in the room and who said what.

And they give you a whole data log of their day and exactly every single move that they made. That no longer becomes a healthy relationship. That relationship is now about making sure that you are good. Now, listen, I am not in no way making the fact that they cheated small, but what I am saying is that you made a decision to stay okay.

You made a decision to stay, to forgive them, and in an attempt to move past the cheating, which means that the only thing that you can hold accountable is your decision to stay. And if that decision to stay in some way needs to be brought up again because they may have cheated on you again, or they may have lied to you again, if you then decide to stay or decide to do, make your next move, that is completely up to you.

You cannot hold your partner accountable for their cheating, especially if you decide to stay. The only person that you can hold accountable is you. The longer that you try to hold them accountable to download to you what they're doing, what they said, who they were with, and all of the above, the more The basis of that relationship becomes about making sure that you're good and happy and that you feel like everything is safe.

That is no longer a relationship about both of you. Now that is a relationship for the next five years about making sure that I make you feel good about the fact that I'm not cheating on you. You can't move on like that. I'm not asking you to forget about the cheating. I'm just saying that you can't hold your partner accountable for it.

Okay

Karina: . All right. The third thing is we made a little dive into cheating. The third thing I want you to understand about forgiveness is that forgiveness is a tool that I want you to use in order to alleviate the overthinking, in order to alleviate the resentment, in order to alleviate the anger and the anxieties of all of it.

Forgiveness is a tool that your spirit needs in order to move on. It is like the juice. That alleviates, like it's like the medicine, forgiveness is the medicine. Praise God for giving me that word. Forgiveness is the medicine that your spirit needs in order to move on in your relationship. When there is an opportunity to forgive your partner, I want you to understand that forgiveness is a tool for you.

Forgiveness, and I know you've heard this before, forgiveness is not about them. Forgiveness is about you. Forgiveness is a tool to alleviate the pain that you're going through, the betrayal that you feel, the hurt that you feel. Forgiveness is a tool for you. Forgiveness allows you to surrender everything.

And plenty of times what happens is that we don't give our partners back to God. Instead, We act like God, we try to fix our partners. Once you can decode who your partner is, every bone in your body will try to fix them because now you understand that you understand why they do the things they do, why they get upset, why they get sad, why they say dumb crap, like you.

Understand the mechanics of who they are. And then the next thing that your mind wants to do is fix them. And this is exactly where, instead of trying to fix your partner, I just want you to surrender and give them back to God. You don't need to take on that role as God. Cause you ain't God, you ain't their savior.

There's only one person that can save us and that is God himself. You cannot save your partner. You cannot save your parent. You cannot save your neighbor. You cannot save these people. Do you understand me? There is a character and a heart posture of surrender that you need to start to form so that you can have healthy relationships.

Plenty of times I talk to people. And they say how much their friends depend on them and how much their friends suck a lot of their energy out and how their friends, you know, they just aren't positive people. And, you know, one of my first questions is like, what keeps you around, right? And the second thing I ask is, well, what type of relationship is this?

Because if anything, I want you to be in relationships in which y'all are pouring into each other. Because if you ain't, then you're going to be left empty. And you're going to be pouring in from an empty cup, and that next project that you want to work on, that next entrepreneur idea that you have, that next job you want to start, the next business you want to start, that next application you want to apply to, whatever the goal is, is going to come from an empty cup.

You understand you cannot play savior in your friendships and relationships and partnerships that you have right now. God wants me to tell you to move aside, move aside and let him do his work. Yes. Will these people get hurt without you? Absolutely. Will they fail without you? Without a doubt. Will they not prosper as quickly if you're not there?

Yes. That will all happen, but what they will do is they will learn. They will learn different things about themselves. The more that you stand in the way of God and the people that he put in your life, the more that you are robbing these friends. family members and partners that you have in your life from the ability and opportunity to practice how to pick themselves back up.

You can't be that person for everybody. God is calling you to be that person for just you. Amen. Okay. I went off a little. The last two things I want you to know about forgiveness is that in order to forgive, You need to have a deep desire to want to rebuild your life, rebuild trust, rebuild, respect, rebuild loyalty, and you need to be able.

To have the willingness to take actions towards that, right? And so like we can sit here and say, yes, forgiveness is a choice. Yes, you're not letting them off the hook. It's a tool that I can use. But what's really going to put the cherry on top is the fact that you have a deep desire to rebuild the very thing that you felt was penetrated and pierced, which is the trust, the respect.

The loyalty and you're willing to take actions in that direction. You understand? Okay. Listen, I am very clear that my podcast episodes are short. I hope that this episode about forgiving your partner helps somebody today. I want you to know if your partner right now and you are struggling in the area of forgiveness or something has happened as far as like infidelity or lack of respect, whatever it is that's happening, or you individually feel like It's just very difficult for you to forgive.

You feel like you just go in circles and you walk around with a lot of resentment towards your partner. I want to work with you. Okay. I want to work with you over the next four months to be able to really get through that resentment and really regain the ability to forgive the people in your life and the people that you say that you love.

Okay. It's very difficult to love wholeheartedly. And not forgive someone. All right. Okay. Go to link in my bio and book a sales call. My primarily live on Instagram at my handle at Karina F. Dave's, or you can go on Tik F. Dave's on the sales call. We're going to talk about everything that's happened so far, what you tried and how I can help.

I want to work with you over the next four months. We meet weekly, 45 minutes, on zoom calls and you have access to me in Voxer, which means that before, you know, if you're in the middle of an argument, before you go for the jugular, you're going to Voxer me, okay. Or if your partner sends you a text and you have no idea what they mean from the text, you are going to screenshot the text messages, send them to me, and I'm going to decode them for you.

Okay. On our first call, we are going to figure out the root of the problem and work through it over the next several weeks. I'm going to tell you everything that your therapist or your couple's therapist is going to take six months to tell you. I'm going to tell it to you in just the first session.

Okay. Listen, if you're loving this podcast, I want you to subscribe to it, save it, share it with all of your amigos. Please leave me a comment in Apple, iTunes, or Spotify. You can also email me, subscribe to my email. If you go to the link in my bio, subscribe to my newsletter called release your relationship, where I share weekly gems on how to surrender your relationship.

Again, my name is Karina F. Daves. I'm a relationship coach and a speaker and the podcast host of this dope podcast, Relationships You Understand. I'm so happy to have been with you another week. And yeah, Te Adoro Mucho. Oh my gosh. Do you know what I didn't do the last episode? I didn't pray. I just, no, we're going to pray.

I just remember, can I pray for you? I'm gonna pray for you anyways. Okay, here we go. Father God, I thank you so much for the ability to wake up another day. Lord, I thank you for the ability to be here on earth, to have the relationships that we have, to have the children we have, to have the family that we have, to have the jobs that we have, Lord, I thank you for our situation, no matter how difficult it can be right now, I know that.

Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that you ask us to do with each other. I'll be honest, there are so many people that I've had trouble forgiving. I mean, so many. And I know that forgiveness or lack of forgiveness creates a stronghold on us and doesn't allow us to move forward with the right heart posture that you want for us.

And so Lord, for anybody that's listening tonight, I pray that you would allow them to forgive. I pray that you would speak to them tonight and give them the right steps to be able to forgive that somebody in their life that they just feel is difficult to forgive. I ask that who is ever listening, just think of one person right now.

Just think of that person right now. God is asking me to tell you to think of one person right now, and I'm going to do it with you. Think of one person right now that you need to forgive that you need to forgive. I'm gonna speak for you. Okay? I want you to tell them, I don't like what you did.

I don't like that you hurt me. I don't like what you did because I love you. And because I love you, it hurts so much more. You're supposed to love me. And what you did doesn't feel like love. It feels like hurt. It feels like betrayal. It feels like you grabbed my heart and broke it into the smallest pieces on purpose.

Every day I wake up not having the capacity to forgive you because I just can't understand why you did what you did. I just can't understand how you rationalized that we're supposed to love each other and I don't feel loved because of what you did. But today,

even though I don't want to, I am choosing to forgive you. I am choosing to understand. That forgiveness doesn't mean I think it's okay concerning the thing that you did. Forgiveness just means that I get to move on. And so, I forgive you. I don't know what the future holds for us. But I need to forgive you for me.

I need to forgive you so I can get an extra breath in my day. I need to forgive you so I can get you out of my head as much as it is now. I need to forgive you. I'm sorry I didn't forgive you sooner. Lord, forgive my transgressions, but I'm not perfect. But today I choose to forgive them, Lord. Lord, I hope that that prayer really helps someone today.

I hope that that prayer multiplies. multiplies and multiplies. I feel the Holy Spirit in this room. And I thank you. I thank you for that declaration. We declare and we decree this over whoever is listening today. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Okay. I hope that helps somebody today. All right. Listen, I don't even know what to say at that point.

that was a, That was a deep prayer for somebody. Amen. If that prayer was for you, would you just write in the chat, that was for me, that was for me? I had somebody in mind too, who I needed to forgive. Whoever that was for. I hope it helped. DM me if that was for you, okay? All right. My name's Karina F.

Daves. I'm a relationship coach, speaker, and the podcast host of this dope podcast, for Relationships You Understand. I love you so much.

God is so good.

And if you ever want to work together, go to the link in my bio, book a sales call, I can't wait to meet you. I love you so much.