It’s well known that no relationship is perfect, nor is every relationship history. People are bound to disappoint each other, either through mistakes of omission or of commission. Your partner forgets an important relationship anniversary (omission) or lies to you about a recent online spending spree (commission). You feel let down to the point of wondering why you’re in the relationship in the first place, especially if this is not all that out of character.

You’re also the first to acknowledge that you’re hardly perfect yourself. Maybe you forgot to stop by the ATM to get cash for an upcoming vacation, as you had promised to do. Or perhaps you made fun of your partner’s new jacket, one that your partner was especially happy with. Now, it’s you who caused a possible rift that will require some work to repair.

Forgiveness and Attachment Style

According to a new study by Auburn University’s Marilyn Cornish and colleagues (2024), these “relationship transgressions,” or “hurts,” “both large and small, occur regularly in close relationships” (p. 2). They create distress because even the small ones can dig deep into an individual’s sense of security in close relationships, or attachment style. Being transgressed against can trigger such questions as “Am I lovable?” and “Is my partner trustworthy?” Thus, it’s not the transgression itself (as annoying as that can be) but the possible symbolic meaning it conveys about the depth of one partner’s feelings toward the other.

Attachment style emerges early in life as the infant develops a sense of self in relation to others, or what is called your “internal working model of self and others.” People with secure attachment styles feel that people close to them are reliable (others) but also that they are worthy of attention and affection (self). People who develop an insecure attachment style become anxious in their relationships to others or avoid them altogether.

It follows that, as the authors proposed, attachment style would form an important part of the equation when people feel transgressed against by their partner. If you have a secure attachment style, you’ll be able to take these deviations from the ideal more or less in stride. People who are insecurely attached, by contrast, will feel more distressed by anything that shakes their already shaky sense of self.

In between a transgression and an outcome, though, is the additional factor of forgiveness, as the authors propose. If you’re going to get over a relationship hurt, you need to engage in this reparative process. However, it’s not just forgiveness toward your partner (interpersonal) but also toward yourself (intrapersonal) that can matter. People with higher levels of intrapersonal (self-) forgiveness show a range of mental health benefits because their self-esteem can bounce back more readily if they’ve done something they regret. Again, you can see how attachment style could affect both forms of forgiveness. People with a more robust sense of self will be able to see their own transgressions in a more forgiving and, therefore, favorable light.

Testing the Forgiveness Model

An online sample of 302 adults in romantic relationships for at least one year provided data on relationship transgressions, attachment style, self- and other-forgiveness, and well-being. The data were collected over a three-week period to allow the research team to filter out participants who were not in close relationships or who did not provide relationship offense data.

The offenses committed by partners consisted of disrespect or humiliation (37 percent), relational neglect or misunderstanding (33 percent), violations of trust (27 percent), and abuse (2 percent). There was a similar distribution for offenses acknowledged by participants as ones they committed themselves.

One of the more interesting measures in the study assessed the tendency to ruminate when your partner does you wrong. Test yourself using a 1 to 5 scale (from least to most) to see how you would react to each one with respect to a recent offense by your partner:

1. I can’t stop thinking about how I was wronged by this person.
2. Memories about this person’s wrongful actions have limited my enjoyment of life.
3. I have a hard time getting thoughts of how I was mistreated out of my head.
4. I try to figure out the reasons why this person hurt me.
5. The wrong I suffered is never far from my mind.
6. I find myself replaying the events over and over in my mind.

Moving on to the role of attachment style, the authors laid out the two factors of positive-self and positive-other, each of which broke down into interpersonal (thoughts and feelings toward the other) and intrapersonal (thoughts and feelings toward the self). These are summarized below:

Having a positive self-model

Interpersonal other-forgiveness: You don’t ruminate about your partner’s wrongdoing (i.e., have a low score on the rumination scale), and you don’t dwell on negative emotions that make you feel bad.

Intrapersonal self-forgiveness: After making a mistake, you aren’t too hard on yourself, and you allow your self-esteem to bounce back.

Having a positive other-model

Interpersonal other-forgiveness: If your partner makes a mistake, you have no trouble feeling good about them, so don’t avoid them and don’t seek revenge.

Intrapersonal self-forgiveness: You take responsibility for your own mistakes and are willing to try to make amends with the person who made a mistake with you.

Both of these factors contributed significantly to the well-being outcomes, supporting the attachment style framework as a way to understand how to overcome transgressions. In other words, you need to feel secure both in your sense of self and secure in the way you believe others will treat you if you are able to forgive your partner.

Summing up the findings, in the words of the authors: “These results highlight the importance of considering both personal and relational aspects of self-forgiveness and other-forgiveness to facilitate the effective resolution of relationship transgressions and enhance well-being” (p. 13). Security breeds forgiveness which, in turn, fosters good feelings all around.

Getting Over Those Bumps in the Road

These two mechanisms of feeling secure in your own sense of self and in the way you feel toward your relationship partner will drive, as the findings show, the forgiveness process when something happens that disrupts your relationship’s harmony. However, what if you don’t have the luxury of a secure attachment style in the first place?

Cornish and her co-authors regard their findings as providing an important starting point for interventions in couples therapy. Transgressions may occur, and forgiveness may be a desirable strategy to promote, but unless attachment style is addressed, these are merely band-aids. Although you may have developed your attachment style in infancy, it does not have to remain an immutable feature of your personality. Indeed, transgressions could provide the perfect starting point to work backwards, through forgiveness, on that underlying “internal working model.”

Go back and examine each of the components that made up self- and other-models. They are each spelled out in detail. Which ones represented your own strong and weak points? For example, how much do you actually ruminate over your partner’s offenses, or can you let them go? Even more helpful, how much do you forgive yourself for the times you’ve hurt your partner? Being able to see transgressions as inevitable but not disastrous can help you become more accepting when they invariably occur by one or the other person in a close relationship.

To sum up, seeing these two components of attachment style as part and parcel of the factors that drive relationship and personal well-being can help you as you chart the path, along with its occasional deviations, toward fulfillment.