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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Gary Smalley 
 
 
Question: 
 
My husband has hurt me so many times, I don’t know if I can keep 
forgiving him. What should I do? 
 
Answer:   
 
I understand that you’re discouraged that your husband keeps hurting 
your feelings and time and again. He probably says, “Yeah, I’ll never 
do that again. That won’t happen again,” and yet it keeps happening 
again. And so, you’re just exhausted and you don’t even want to 
forgive him any more. In fact, there’s such an unsafe atmosphere in 
your home that it’s like “I’m just worn out.” 
 
Well, there are several things you can do. Number one: you don’t have 
any choice in the matter if you forgive him or not. Even if it’s ten times 
a day. The famous quote by Jesus Christ was that it’s seventy times 
seven. Four hundred and ninety times. But what that number is used 
for is eternity, I mean it’s forever—it’s always going to keep 
happening.  
 
Why is that important? The reason it is important for you to 
understand that no matter how many times your husband has 
offended you, you have to forgive them, because lack of forgiveness is 
a poison inside of you. If you don’t forgive, it’s like drinking poison and 
hoping your husband gets sick. You’re the one who’s going to get sick.  
 
Buried anger is never buried dead. It’s always buried alive. When you 
allow anger to stay inside, it grows tentacles. It’s like these ugly-
looking tentacles growing around your heart, and your life, and your 
lungs, and it’s hard to breath.  
 
 
 
Because anger is a damaging, dangerous—in fact, think of it like this: 
this is a little spray bottle right here. So, when an angry person gets 
angry, they’re actually spraying anger mist over you. That anger mist 
is coming out of that person’s own anger. I guarantee that your 
husband is in conflict. Your husband has his own anger.  
 
He could be angry with you. Maybe he’s not talking to you because 
you’ve been saying things and doing things to him that have offended 
him. And this is part—or maybe he has a boss that makes him angry 
every day, all these things that happen—but whatever he is, we know 
he’s angry inside because when he sprays anger on you you’re going 
to feel it, it’s going to soak into your skin. You’ve going to feel cruddy, 
basically.  
 
What you have to do is to decide ahead of time is, “I’m going to 
forgive my husband.” The reason is it gets the poison out of your 
heart. And it relieves those tentacles that are growing inside of you.  
 
I don’t want any buried anger inside of me. I did for years, and I was 
discouraged, depressed, stressed. I had more problems than you can 
imagine, health-wise, all because all this anger stored up, even from 
my childhood, bosses, various people, family members.  
 
Now, I don’t like that. So, I get it out. I forgive by doing this: I, first of 
all, understand—I don’t take words from people personally—because 
words are coming out of a person’s heart, their own beliefs. So, I 
always know that a hurting person is a hurting person. I will get hurt 
by people that are hurting.  
 
Why are they hurting? Maybe they were abused as a kid. What kind of 
parents did your husband have? What kind of a boss does he have? 
What’s been his life? Was he an orphan? I don’t know what happened 
to him. Maybe he’s got all this stuff stored up inside of him. He’s never 
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had a model of anybody who actually knows how to get anger out of 
them. 
 
Why don’t you be the model? Why don’t you be the example, and 
learn how to forgive? The more you understand why he’s angry, the 
more relaxed you get inside, because you don’t take it personal then. 
And you have greater understanding. 
 
I can remember when sometimes my kids and I would be driving 
through a toll booth in Chicago and I remember one time we dropped 
the money, and the attendant went, “Hey kid! Don’t drop that down 
there! Get more responsible!” My kids all went “Whoa!” And they all 
jumped back. I got out of the car and picked up the money. I never 
said a word to him, and we drove off. And they all said, “Whoa, what’s 
stuck in that person?” and “Daddy, he hurt my feelings!” And I said 
“What you have to realize is that man has an ‘owie’ in his heart, and 
that’s how you see the ‘owie,’ by his anger.” 
 
That still sticks with them, thirty years later. So, the more you 
understand about him, the more relaxed and the more compassionate 
you’re going to be for him, instead of bitter. 
 
Then, thirdly, it’s very important to think of the offenses your husband 
has done to you “on a big screen,” or a chalkboard—let’s say a 
chalkboard—and you need to write those up, and put them in 
categories, because maybe he’s done the same thing a thousand 
times. Put them in categories. And then take an eraser and erase 
them. And literally say out loud, “I forgive you for all these things 
you’ve said to me, because these things are coming out of your own 
heart and your own past.”  
 
The next point is really important. Since he’s acting and hurting you 
with his behavior, and all this behavior is coming from his own heart, I 
want you to start praying for him, and reading things, and looking up 
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things that you can help him get free from the things that are bugging 
him.  
 
In other words, any time you get involved in the healing of another 
person, just moving towards the idea of helping them become healed, 
heals you. Most people have at least heard of the Lord’s prayer, where 
it says, if we forgive those who have trespassed against us. What that 
really means is, if I forgive those who trespassed against me what I’m 
really doing is I’m involved in at least praying for their healing, or 
doing what I can to see them healed. I’m encouraging them. It’s so 
powerful in healing you.  
 
That’s what I did. I got involved in helping people in general, more 
specifically the people who hurt me, and as I got involved, I was 
healed. It’s very freeing for you, so you don’t have to keep this anger 
inside you. You can get proactive and get that out of your life. 
 
 
 
 
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