Adolescents Forgiveness toward Father’s Infidelity

Abstract

Introduction:

Infidelity in a marriage is one of the family issues that often occurs in big cities in Indonesia. The pain caused by infidelity in the household is not only felt by the spouse, but also directly impact the child. The psychological reactions that children feel to parental affair differ depend on their ages and stage of development. Furthermore, the effects of parental affair for adolescents have stronger impact than children. This is because during adolescence, they are trying to find their identity and might be affected by events in their environment. To sum up, children of infidelity parents in adolescent period, are prone to psychological problems.

Goals and methods:

This study aims to obtain the description of forgiveness of adolescents who experience father’s infidelity. This research used qualitative method with in-depth interview technique. Participants were three adolescents come from vary family background with affair located in Jakarta-Indonesia. There were 3 participants in the age group 19-21 years.

Results:

Overall, the objectives of this research were achieved. Results showed that the most important supporting factor in forgiveness is the closeness of relations that can be seen from the pre-event of father's affair. This is because the closeness of the relationship greatly affects the participants in feeling empathy after experiencing father's affair. Social support, particularly from their mother also important. This made participants able to forgive their father completely. In addition, the influence of religiosity on forgiveness was experienced by all three participants.

Conclusions:

The process of forgiveness experienced by participants was quite different from one to another. Each participant showed psychological reactions related to prolonged anger and loss of trust towards the father. 2 out of 3 participants decided to forgive their fathers and felt a sense of relief that influenced their daily lives.