In our master thesis, we researched forgiveness in marital and partner relationship. We focused on how people who are not professionally engaged in therapeutic practice confront and deal with forgiveness.
The main theoretical part of the master thesis followed the logical timeline of a forgiveness process. It also touched upon the terms related to forgiveness which coincide with the process itself and are often confused when speaking generally of forgiveness. We also addressed forgiveness in relation to religion as the original environment where forgiveness has been spoken about for centuries. We briefly focused on the question of forgiveness as the path of personal free will or God's grace. We touched on the latter also because some of the married participants mentioned personal relationship with God, faith in the sacramental marriage and faith in the power of forgiveness in the interview.
As part of the phenomenological qualitative research, we interviewed people about their experience of forgiveness in partner or marital relationship. The transcript of the interviews showed the key themes and subthemes highlighted by the participants. We arranged the themes chronologically, from the occurrence of injustice, unpleasant physical and emotional states, the awareness of injustice and entry into the process of forgiveness, to the pleasant physical and emotional states after the forgiveness and the sense of calmness.
The master thesis is therefore an intertwining whole of forgiveness and regret dynamics in the victim and perpetrator. The thesis shows that these, at first glance, diametrically opposite aspects are actually very close to each other since the perpetrator was also an innocent victim of an act of injustice in his or her past, which he or she could not or did not know how to process. The perpetrator is offered a new possibility of addressing this injustice in a marital or partner relationship.
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