Forgiveness is usually the harder part of the adage "Forgive and Forget," but two West Campus professors have done extensive research that may make forgiveness easier for some.
Vincent Waldron and Douglas Kelley spent the last 10 years studying long-term relationships and how those involved in the relationships learned to forgive one another. Waldron and Kelley put together these studies into a book titled "Communicating Forgiveness."
"We study long-term relationships — whether it is marriage or work relationships, there always comes a crisis or major challenge," Waldron said.
"In the book, we study long-term married couples — couples that have been together for 45 years — and we recruited them from local retirement communities and put adds in the newspaper to nominate couples," he said.
"Couples still deal with the same issues they did early in their relationship — it's just that their perspective has changed," Kelley added.
The College of Human Services professors covered different topics and based them on real-life experiences. They interviewed 54 couples in 60-minute interviews and imputed stories that came from students about being forgiven or forgiving others, Kelley said. In the interviews, they asked the couples to relate material to forgiveness.
"The main idea is acknowledgement of hurt and [to] take responsibility of your actions [in a relationship]," Waldron said.
The professors said every relationship they studied lead to some sort of conflict that resulted in asking and understanding forgiveness.
"They've also learned to modify how they relate to each other," Kelley added. "Someone who is a strong personality usually always has been and always will be. But they learn ways to tweak their behaviors so that they don't run over their partner. In addition, they become more accepting of one another."
One student said she thinks she would find the professors' research to be helpful in her own relationships.
"I think forgiveness is very important in a relationship," said Gina Rouban, a global business student who had Kelley as a professor. "Most conflicts in relationships are trivial and only hurt them. Not being able to forgive for a long time only harms the individual because it brings negativity into their life."
Kelley and Waldron said they plan to continue their research and have two projects in the works: "Marriage is For-Giving" and "Beyond the Empty Nest."
Reach the reporter at: christina.boccio@asu.edu.
