Back to TTM ResultsForgiveness is an important process by which couples cope with interpersonal transgressions and repair their relationship after an interpersonal injury (Fincham et al., 2004), and lack of forgiveness is related to relationship distress (e.g., Gordon et al., 2005) and adverse health outcomes (e.g., Herbert & Cohen, 1993). An important predictor of forgiveness is attachment security (e.g., Kachadourian et al., 2004), and given the robust associations between attachment security and relationship functioning, we predicted that forgiveness may be a mechanism of this association. In a two year study of 200 newlywed couples, we examined whether forgiveness mediated the link between attachment insecurity and self-reported health and martial outcomes. Couples completed online questionnaires about marital satisfaction, health, and attachment security two months prior to marriage and every six months for two years (5 waves of data). At the second wave of data collection, couples also visited the laboratory where they engaged in two discussions about a time their partner hurt their feelings. Prior to the discussions, spouses completed questionnaires assessing offence-specific forgiveness and after the discussion they completed questionnaires assessing perceptions of the discussion. Preliminary results from one year outcome data indicate that compared to husbands, wives generally report feeling more hurt by their husbands, and are less likely to forgive their transgressions. The more hurtful the event, the less likely spouses were to feel forgiving, and this led to more negative views of the discussions by wives. Although insecurity was related to feeling more hurt, feeling less forgiving, having more negative perceptions of the discussion, and marital dissatisfaction, forgiveness did not mediate the link between insecurity and changes in marital satisfaction. However, greater forgiveness by both spouses was related to improvements in health and marital satisfaction over one year for husbands. Thus, dealing with hurt feelings in a relationship is important for individual health and for relationships, and may be particularly so for husbands.
Acknowledgements
A manuscript based on this study is currently in preparation to be submitted for publication. Preparation of this article was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Grant 410-2005-0829 awarded to Rebecca J. Cobb. The authors wish to thank Kim Bartholomew for her helpful comments on drafts of this manuscript, the research assistants who helped with data collection, and the couples who participated in this research.