Member-only story
LIFE
My Ex-Wife’s Cancer Diagnosis and the Power of Forgiveness
A lack of forgiveness prevents us from living fully and loving completely
Harboring resentment is like slapping yourself and then expecting the other person to feel the pain.
Resentment is a subject I know all too well. I had to let go of it concerning my ex-wife during a period of my life where forgiveness was necessary, but not easy to embrace. How to forgive someone is not an easy task for many of us.
Maybe I was not as happy as a single person before we got married. An unhappy single person has a good chance to turn into an unhappy married person. Why?
Because happiness is not determined by one’s circumstances, but more by one’s outlook.
And my outlook might have been skewed to begin with. My ex-wife was seven years younger at 23 years old, the youngest child of her parents, and often the most protected one. It’s possible there was more time needed on her part to mature, and maybe for me as well.
Although we viewed our marriage as a lifelong union, we let our unrealistic expectations cloud our ability to root out any daydreams we had about marriage and hinder our ability to replace them with realities.
