RELATIONSHIPS Forgiveness can be a struggle, but expert stresses the healing

Sometimes, the road to forgiveness involves confronting painful realities.
By JOHN BOUDREAU
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- It happens -- he dumps you. Or she moves out, professing to want her freedom. You're sick at heart, unable to eat, sleep, carry on. You want to die. What to do?
One word: Vegas!
OK, so maybe a lost weekend won't solve the underlying problems of rage and bitterness at being betrayed, bereft, abandoned. But face it, at some point in our lives we're all knocked out by a really low blow, and before we can get up and move on, we have to learn how to forgive.
"It's learning to make peace with the word 'no,'" says Fred Luskin, co-founder and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project (www.learningtoforgive.com), which researches the benefits of forgiveness and teaches ways to forgive. "What you really are forgiving is the fact that things in life didn't turn out the way you wanted them to."
A long recovery
It's not easy, nor is it quick. Suddenly you are alone with a pain that, in the words of C.S. Lewis, is like air. It touches everything.
For seven years, Catherine O'Brien was consumed with anger.
Her husband had left her. The divorce was horrendous. And O'Brien, director of the video program at Stanford University, was left to rear their daughter alone.
It was not the ever-after life she had planned.
"I was sick a lot," she says. "I was stressed. I got every cold that went around. It was like an abyss."
But then O'Brien, 54, forgave her ex. She had listened to a tape by Luskin, whose research has documented clinical evidence that forgiveness improves a person's emotional and physical well-being. The rage, bitterness -- her sense of being a victim -- dissipated.
"It was like a lightning bolt," O'Brien recalls. Three years after the breakup, she called her ex-husband. "I let him know that I wanted to have some sort of relationship with him," she says.
Now, O'Brien has opened up her heart to another man. She allowed herself to trust again. "My life is pretty good," she says. "I have a wonderful relationship that I would never have been open to if I hadn't forgiven."
What it isn't
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring the hurt, condoning the damaging actions or befriending the one who caused so much pain.
"It does not mean you ever have to see that person again," says therapist Johanna Maybury of San Jose, Calif.
Forgiveness does not come easily, nor often quickly. Spencer Koffman, 46, is still struggling with the abrupt end to a short -- but intense -- relationship about nine months ago.
"I still think about the situation and her too much," he says. They have mutual friends. He used to play regularly in softball games with her. Now he avoids them. "I just can't deal with dealing with her right now."
Luskin, author of "Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness" (HarperSanFrancisco, $13.95), teaches people to work at putting their pain in perspective. "You can complain all you want about bad lovers, but if you have 10 toes and good health, that puts you ahead of many, many people," he says.
Avoiding 'victim' feeling
Luskin and others prod the emotionally wounded to not see themselves as victims:
UUnderstand that the other person's actions are not a personal rejection.
UDon't fixate on blaming your ex. Don't give him or her the power to regulate your emotions.
UAllowing emotions to flare up every time you think of this person can be habit-forming.
If you repeatedly tell your story of pain -- he left me for another woman and broke my heart -- you are creating a negative narrative that continually wounds you.
Telling a different story -- I am finally free of a relationship that was not good for me -- can move a person away from self-pity to confidence.