Self-forgiveness in romantic relationships: 2. Impact on interpersonal forgiveness

Abstract

Both self-forgiveness and other-forgiveness are associated with greater relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships. The present research examines whether self-forgiveness for a transgression against the partner leads to greater forgiveness of a subsequent partner transgression, and whether this, in turn, predicts greater relationship satisfaction. Study 1 showed that self-forgiveness positively affected other-forgiveness in a scenario-based design employing university students. Study 2 investigated real transgressions between cohabiting partners and showed that self-forgiveness was positively related to relationship satisfaction both directly and indirectly, through other-forgiveness. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research.

Keywords:

• self-forgiveness
• interpersonal forgiveness
• relationship satisfaction
• romantic couples

Notes

1. Even though the ratio of subjects to estimated parameters was 3.5 in the model tested, that is lower than the 5 one recommended by some others (e.g. Bentler & Chou, 1987), some subsequent works (McCallum, Browne, & Sugawara, 1996) on the question of sample size in SEM has shown that it is impossible to derive a minimum ratio that is appropriate in all situations, rather the minimum sample size is highly dependent on several characteristics, including the average communality of measured variables. When communalities are high (>.6), as they are in the present study, sample sizes of about 100 subjects are often adequate.