Interviews

What are the Keys to a Happy and Successful Long-term Relationship?
Interview with Dr. Fred Luskin, Ph.D.
2007

By Kelley McCabe

Recently, I had the good fortune of interviewing Dr. Fred Luskin on developing skills in forgiveness and the resulting impact on significant, and/or marital, relationships. Dr. Luskin holds a Ph.D. in Counseling and Health Psychology from Stanford University .  He is the Co-Director of the Stanford-Northern Ireland HOPE Project, an ongoing series of workshops and research projects that investigate the effectiveness of his forgiveness methods on the victims of political violence. He served as the Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, the largest research project to date on the training and measurement of a forgiveness intervention.  Currently Dr. Luskin is the Co-Chair of the Garden of Forgiveness Project at Ground Zero in Manhattan . His work has been featured in Time, O, U.S. News and World Reports, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, U.S.A. Today and the Wall Street Journal.

Kelley: Hi Fred. Thanks for talking with me today. I guess one of the main topics we're going to cover is, "How can developing skills in forgiveness benefit marital, and other significant relationships?

Fred: There are a couple of ways. One is if you understand that disagreement is central to any relationship. But how you handle the disagreements can lead to either a successful or unsuccessful relationship.

There is some research that shows that 70% of the things that people disagree about when they start a relationship, are still disagreements when the relationship ends. And so, it is not necessarily that people change or people don't disagree. It is that some couples learn to navigate disagreements better than others. One of the main qualities that has been shown to help people deal with the fact that their partner is not going to do what they want, but is going to make mistakes and fail, is to have forgiveness in their kind of "bag of tricks".

The second quality is, over the course of a relationship, you are almost guaranteed that your partner is really going to screw up and do something pretty awful once or twice. And, if you do not have some ability to get over that and to move on, then the marriage ends at that point.

Finally, the quality that is most dangerous to relationships - is the quality of contempt, when people take the problems they bring into the marriage and blame them on their partner. This can cause them to become really harsh towards their partner and blame them for what is wrong in the marriage or relationship. Blame remains a detrimental part of the relationship, especially if there has not been the quality of forgiveness throughout..

Kelley: So, the answer is relationships can survive in spite of disagreements, and will be more harmonious if we have the right expectations, and we have developed forgiveness as one of our basic skills.

Fred: And you have to expect that you are going to disagree and not get along on many things. Some people let that overwhelm them.

Kelley: What do you mean by that?

Fred: They let disagreements overwhelm them. For example, they are just not prepared for the fact that this wonderful loving person likes pizza when they like Chinese food, and they do not get over that. They store that as a wounding. They think, "my partner is supposed to do what I want and to think the same way that I do." But the partner wants something very different and sees things very differently. Those things come up all the time in relationships.

Kelley: My second question is about the physiological benefits of forgiveness in general..

Fred: I can give you some guidance on that. The physiologic benefits are related to stress, and when you are agitated or blaming or angry or frustrated with someone, your body is experiencing stress. This is especially true when the stress becomes chronic. It has negative effects on just about every cell in the body. But, there are two levels of psychological success that come with forgiveness. One is the sense that you have a certain power inside of you that you did not think you had. Let's say you are struggling with a partner is always a slob, for example, or is chronically late. simple things that always bend you out of shape. Then one day you realize, "You know, that is just the way they are, and, I love them anyway." There is also a tremendous power that comes from not being ruffled by the normal life experiences of being in a relationship. The value of this to a relationship is profound because nobody likes to be attacked for who they are.

Kelley: What about the benefit of forgiveness after divorce?

Fred: The main benefit is you have less prejudice towards new prospective partners. you do not carry as much negativity into your next relationship. You've made peace with your failed relationship. Then there are the physiologic changes associated with anger, hostility, and blame. Less anger and hostility means less stress and therefore, clearer minds and better decision making. Another benefit is the sense of accomplishment associated with having forgiven a partner and moved on. which allows one to bring a sense of positive efficacy into their life in the next relationship. Both are very helpful.

Kelley: Yes, that does seem beneficial.

You talk in your book, Forgive for Good , about "unenforceable rules": rules we make up for other people but, it turns out, can't really enforce. The second part of my question on divorce is, "Are there ways of finding out what behaviors are likely to come up in our relationships that bring out our "unenforceable rules"? Because you where talking earlier about how 70% of the problems in a relationship are there from the beginning.

Fred: But having a disagreement with your spouse is not a problem and even having an unenforceable rule is not a terrible thing. It is just once you see that you are overreacting, do you calm down or change you unenforceable rule? So, it is one thing to say, "I would prefer that my partner be neat." It is another thing to say, "They have to be neat". There is no problem with having a preference to neatness and we are not going to get rid of our preferences, nor should we. Some people may like to have vacations where they lie out on the beach all day and another person may want to have a vacation where they do something all the time. Both of them are fine. It is just that couples have quarreled over that because neither of them realizes that they have taken their preferences and turned them into rules that have to be obeyed. What is more important than worrying about our unenforceable rules, is learning how to let go of them or soften them when they come up. That is the more important thing for the health of a marriage. Because your rules change over time and people change over time and it's very important to be able to recognize, "Okay, I have a blood pressure of 180/140 just because he said something that I do not like. It's time to review my rules."

Kelley: Alright. So, I think the next question comes a little bit from my own experience. I think there are some unenforceable rules that should remain rules.

Fred: There is a difference between "unenforceable rules" and things that you find as non-negotiable, which means, you are going to do something in response. A non-enforceable rule means that somebody else needs to do, or not do, something and that is different from defining certain behaviors as unacceptable.

Kelley: Right. My question is, "how do we see others faults more clearly before we marry? Before we're married and find out our partner engages in some unhealthy or unacceptable behavior?

Fred: Right! Okay. Well, first of all, anyone who does this kind of work can intelligently suggest that people wait a bit before they decide to get married. You want to have plenty of exposure to your partner so you can see what they are like and what they do.

Secondly, you need to sit with yourself and think, "What are the half a dozen deal breakers I have that I am willing to live by." For example, you know that if your partner has an affair, then for certain you're going home to Mama.

That is not about just about their affair. It is about what you are willing to do about it. It is very simple: if you have a couple of deal breakers then you need to make clear to your partner that, "I will not sit by if you are an alcoholic. I'm not against you, but I will not sit by." Being able to learn to be assertive in a marriage is essential: "this is what I want." But the unenforceable rule is: "you have to give me what I want." That is what does not work and that is what drives people crazy. But having legitimate desires.there is nothing wrong with having legitimate desires. The thing to recognize is that it does not mean a specific person has to meet those desires.

I think it is very important go into marriage knowing a couple of things. One is that, out of your free will you chose this human being, and you continue to choose them everyday you are in the marriage, and you can unchoose them anytime you want. Second, is the clear acknowledgment that every single person, including me, is deeply flawed. Therefore, I am not marrying someone who is going to "save me". I am marrying a human being, and this human being comes with a lot of problems; problems that every human being comes with. The key question is, "Am I willing to deal with this human being's problems?" - not spending your marriage trying to change those problems because people do not change that easily. And third, once I understand my partner has a lot of problems - how can I still find the best in them?

That is really what a marriage is all about: accepting the fact that this person does things I don't like. Knowing that, I determine to spend my time looking for what they do well and the ways in which they are loving partners. I am not going to obsess about the fact they are flawed. That is the part of the basic contract. The question is, simply, am I willing to deal with these flaws?

The truth is that every relationship has its cost and we are all continually deciding whether we are willing to pay it. The difficulty is in our tendency to blame our partner; thinking it is their fault that we chose them and then do not want a relationship with them -- it is like buying a car and then seeing another car you like better. It is not your first car's fault. And, you're welcome to disengage from a relationship. It is just the hostility and the blame that is so lethal.

Kelley: Right. I went into my relationship totally thinking, "This is my soul mate and everything is going to be perfect and everything should be perfect." Which is totally unrealistic.

Fred: That could be totally unrealistic.

Kelley: Well, you know it happens. I was raised on Disney, what can I say?

Fred: Of course, but Kelley, many people go into relationships with those kind of expectations and that is one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high.

Kelley: Right, and why it is important to give this information to people before they get too old. Before the media indelibly sets unrealistic expectations.

Fred: Yes, the thing is though, what you do with forgiveness is recognize that, even though you have a flawed person, you have some control over how much of their goodness you are able to hold within their flaws. How much good you see in her. You can say your partner is working late all the time and you are going to hate her or you could say that working late is taking care of the family. There is no single truth to it. If you accept the fact your partner does not have to abide by your 5 o'clock deadline, you can think of a good, positive, and loving attribution for it. That is the marital forgiveness that happens in successful marriages. That is what happens. Successful people begin to find a benign way of dealing with what could be irritating.

Kelley: What is the best way to shape our expectations to our partners? I think you talked about that, but is there anything else you want to say?

Fred: Yes, there is. When you have chosen a partner, then from that point on you want to do your best to see them in the best light. Before you get married you want to go over them with a fine tooth comb, right? But after you choose someone, you want to have a very fuzzy lens because the bottom line of a marriage is you want to be your partner's best friend. You want to be supportive and forgiving. You want to see their best qualities. You want to cut them slack.

Kelley: So it is not that we should expect nothing of our partner, but more that we should look for the best in them once we are married to them. and also to be able to forgive them when they do not meet our expectations.

Fred: And to be legitimately assertive, when necessary, about your wants and desires and needs. That has to be in the mix too: assertive, but not hostile. You simply want to say, "I am sorry, but this is my boundary. This is where I draw the line. This is where I say no." That has to be part of it, otherwise your partner may take advantage of you.

Kelley: Yes, exactly. Okay. So, the last question is, "What is the difference between forgiving someone and taking legal actions to protect yourself which sort of gets to what you were just talking about, and is it possible to do both?"

Fred: Of course it is. I mean forgiveness is the emotional quality. I regularly tell women, "Forgive your husband, but make sure you get child support." I mean they are not antithetical and you have an overriding responsibility to protect your children and to protect yourself, but you can protect yourself with rage and hostility, or you can protect yourself because that is what you need to do. You do not get more protection by having rage and hostility, in fact, in some ways you get less. And the forgiveness piece is what helps you move from rage and hostility to, "This is just what I need to do." And even if you forgive it does not get rid of your responsibility to be a good parent or to be a person who has self-respect.

Kelley: So, self-respect, seeing the good in the other person, knowing we all have flaws and seeing our partner's flaws through a fuzzy-lens. And when we do see flaws, having forgiveness skills in our "bag of tricks". Those are the keys to a happy marriage or partnership.

Fred: Yes, that is the process of making a marriage successful.

Kelley: Thank you, Fred. I know I would have found this information to be enormously helpful 20 years ago. I'm sure it will be of great benefit to those who hear it now. Thanks, again.

Kelley McCabe began her career on Wall St. where she worked for 20 years as a senior executive for companies like Salmon Brothers, Lehman Brothers, and Citigroup. More recently, she has interviewed medical researchers such as Dr. Ruth Quillian-Wolever, from Duke University 's Center for Integrative Medicine, and Nancy Saum, a researcher associated with Walter Reed Hospital .

In the Forgive for Good class series, Dr. Frederic Luskin presents the forgiveness training methodology that has been validated through nine successful research studies conducted through Stanford University 's Stanford Forgiveness Projects. Recently, Dr. Luskin's and other's research has confirmed the virtues of forgiveness training in the promotion of psychological, relationship and physical health. Forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt, depression and stress and lead to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion and self confidence.