"Trust and forgiveness are important in relationships. Trust establishes a feeling of safety, from within which each partner will feel most free to be themselves. It is easiest to find your heart's center when there is no fear. Trust also enables you to develop yourselves much further as a partnership. Using the analogy of a team, when all the players can trust one another to do their best to execute the plays they have practiced, they can then release their attention fully into executing the plays. They do not have to second guess whether they can rely on their teammates to do their parts. The time saved from having to check frequently to see if each member is in the right place, and doing the right thing, can be utilized to execute more sophisticated plays. Trust enables them to realize and express their full potentials as a team. It is the same with relationships.

     "Forgiveness comes into play when one of you does something that brings suffering to the other. It can range from mild irritation to major hurt. Sooner or later it will happen, and then how you handle it will determine whether or not even more suffering is generated. Forgiveness is a way to handle such events that minimizes any further suffering. In this it is very practical and desirable.

     "What makes both trust and forgiveness challenging is that neither can actually be done! Trust and forgiveness result from doing other things beside trusting and forgiving. It is when these other things are done that feelings of trust and forgiveness emerge. To develop trust and learn to forgive, it is important to know what you can actually do, therefore, to foster these results."
© 2000 Mark Shafer