Richard Nicastro, Phd, takes a closer look at some of the obstacles to forgiveness in intimate relationships.  
Imagine this scenario:
Your spouse/partner has wounded you in some way. S/he has now expressed what feels like genuine remorse to you. Maybe you’ve even said you accept the apology you were offered, but now you’re wondering whether that was just lip service, because you don’t feel forgiving at all. Quite the contrary. You feel frozen in an anti-forgiveness stance.
However, you really and truly want to forgive. You don’t think your partner is going to repeat the behavior that caused the hurt. You know that forgiveness is good for you, that holding onto resentment will ultimately rob you of peace.
And yet, you can’t forgive him/her. Why?
What’s holding you back? Obstacles to forgiveness
The mind is powerful, complicated, and incredibly nuanced. And to make it even more complex, there are different levels of mind: there’s the conscious mind that we’re in touch with, but there’s a whole ’nother level that’s at work beneath the surface, while we’re carpooling the kids or weeding the garden or prepping for a work presentation.
We don’t need to stop what we’re doing to zero in on what’s going on in our subconscious,

Originally published at http://loveandlifetoolbox.com