Dear Julia:

My boyfriend acknowledges that his relationship with his mother is affecting his ability to maintain positive relationships with women in general. His mother was physically abusive and beat him and his siblings with an ironing cord. He has long maintained that his mother is dead to him and he has had no contact with her for most of his adult life. I explain that for him to heal his wounds, he must begin to forgive and understand her motivations. He can't even entertain forgiveness for someone who beats up on defenseless children. What can I say to begin to move him in the right direction to break through this stance of non-forgiveness? He wants to heal but he can't forgive her.
Kerri

Dear Kerri:

I was once in your shoes and I often see people struggling with similar dilemmas. When my husband was a boy, his alcoholic father would tie him to his bed and beat him with a belt. Like your boyfriend, when I met my husband and learned about all of this, he hadn't had any contact with his father for decades and had no interest whatsoever in forgiving him.

As this was totally foreign to my spiritual frame of mind, I tried all sorts of angles to help him find a higher perspective on his abusive childhood. Eventually, I realized that I was imposing my own spiritual values on him, and though I believed that forgiving his father would set him free, I had to let go of my own agenda.

The good news is that your boyfriend is aware of the connection between his childhood and his relationship issues as an adult. That conscious awareness is huge. Also, you say that he does want to heal. Fortunately, there are some powerful processes that can quickly free him from these old wounds.

I recommend hypnotherapy. You don't have to even mention the word forgiveness or have that be his goal in therapy; he can simply seek freedom from the various ways his life is being adversely affected by his traumatic childhood. A skilled therapist won't determine a preset agenda anyway; instead, she'll work with his subconscious mind and higher self to affect healing in whatever way is right and best for him.

Often people find it hard to forgive because all the pain from the past has been frozen in their auras, so it's still as painful today as it ever was. When they even think about the past, they poke into these old wells of energy, which can feel frightening, uncomfortable and overwhelming. They're sort of like children who are afraid to have a Band-aid removed: they don't realize that once it's ripped off, the pain will quickly pass.

Beyond suggesting hypnotherapy, in order to help your boyfriend as he works through this, I think it would be wise to let go of your attachment to him finding a way to forgive his mother. You may be right that this is just what he needs, but by making it your own goal, you're setting yourself at odds with him instead of aligning with him in loving, respectful support.

When counseling people who are stuck in painful emotions, the first thing I do is try to understand and validate the way they feel. Often children who suffered abusive childhoods grew up feeling like no one was on their side. They were also usually blamed for their own mistreatment - like they had done something wrong to deserve it - though they may have known this wasn't true. This history makes them quick to defend themselves whenever anyone suggests that they may be wrong somehow. It also makes them quick to withdraw from potentially volatile conversations.

For you to be able to help him, your boyfriend needs to know that you are on his side and that you don't think he is wrong or bad as a person even if he has no interest in forgiving his mother. After he knows that you love and accept him as he is, he may be able to open his mind to other perspectives. On the other hand, he may never change the way he thinks and feels about this. The important thing is for you to have no attachment to any particular outcome (such as him forgiving his mother) but only a sincere desire to help him find peace in his own time and way.

Early in my relationship with my husband, I became aware that whenever he felt like he may be in any trouble with me, he would lie. Since I'm psychic (hello??), he never got away with this, so as you can imagine, we had many long, exhausting conversations as we tried to work things out. When I tuned in and realized that his tendency to lie was rooted in his abusive childhood (when he often had to lie to avoid his father's wrath) everything began to shift. As we had one deep, emotionally safe conversation after another about why he tended to lie and how it affected our relationship, my husband began to relax with me as he never had with anyone before. Though it took years of hard work, I know that he gained a lot of self-awareness as to why his first reaction whenever he felt cornered was to lie, which eventually led to him becoming a more honest, emotionally brave person.

Of course, you have needs too, and none of this means that you have to put up with a dysfunctional relationship as a result of your boyfriend's issues. Instead of focusing on him forgiving his mother, however, you're wise to focus on your relationship and the specific things you need from him in order to feel happy and fulfilled.

Separate the issue of him forgiving his mother from how he behaves in relationship to you. While there may be direct correlations, you can still focus on how his behavior affects you, which will untangle you both from all those messy childhood issues so you can start fresh. To use an example from my own life, if he says that he lies to you because he learned to lie in order to protect himself when he was a child, you might say that your heart breaks to think of all he went through, but you still need him to be honest with you now.

Together my husband and I have taken on a number of the crazy behaviors he picked up during his crazy childhood. He still has no interest in forgiving his father, but with each issue we work through, I see him developing a wiser approach to life and a deeper sense of peace. While it hasn't always been easy, it has always been worth it. In fact, I'm sure that pushing each other to grow and being there for each other through thick and thin has made our relationship that much deeper, stronger and more rewarding.

Of course, I've learned my own lessons through all of this. I realized that it is impossible to force someone to view things the way we view them or feel the way we think they should feel. I also was reminded again and again to trust that all is well. When others are struggling, they are chewing on the very lessons they most need to experience in order to learn whatever they need to learn.

If we believe that they must change in order for us to have the sort of relationship we want with them, and they can't or won't do that, we have to trust that acting on our true feelings - even if that means we move on - will prove wise and best for us. We must do our own best, trust that others are doing their bests too, communicate the truths in our hearts, and surrender the outcome to the Universe.

Your man will eventually find peace and healing - we all do. In the mean time, it will be good for both of you to have a challenging but loving relationship. You're experiencing firsthand why relationships are the most powerful catalysts for spiritual growth, and as you work things out together, you will both learn and grow in wonderful ways. Give thanks for all these lessons, and remember to trust that love will find a way.

- Julia

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