Hurtful Events and Forgiveness among Ghanaian Couples

Abstract

Hurt is an inevitable aspect of couples’ relationships that can pose perceived threats, influencing appraisal processes and forgiveness. This dyadic, cross-sectional study employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design to investigate the types of hurtful events couples encounter and the impact of hurt and negative appraisals on forgiveness among 102 couples within the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, aged 24 to 73 (M = 38.79, SD = 9.35). In the first part, participants described hurtful events experienced in their relationships using a prompt, which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results revealed ten (10) typologies of hurtful events: (1) active disassociation; (2) passive disassociation; (3) infidelity, (4) disrespect, (5) violence, (6) humiliation, (7) criticism, (8) deception, (9) neglect of duty, and (10) insecurity. In the second part, participants completed questionnaires measuring the impact of hurt, negative affect, and forgiveness. Quantitative analyses using Pearson correlations, MANOVA, Multilevel Analysis (Actor Partner Intercept Model- APIM), and Hierarchical regression analysis tested hypotheses regarding the influence of demographic factors such as age and relationship length on the impact of hurt, religious differences in forgiveness, and associations between hurt impact, negative appraisals, and forgiveness. Results indicated that age and relationship length showed non significant trends toward reducing the impact of hurt and negative appraisals, while religious affiliation did not significantly affect decisional or emotional forgiveness. Importantly, higher levels of hurt impact were significantly associated with increased negative appraisals and decreased forgiveness within couples. Religious homogamy moderated the relationship between negative appraisals and forgiveness, highlighting the cultural distinctiveness of forgiveness processes among Ghanaian couples.