Behavior Analysis of Forgiveness in Couples Therapy

Behavioral couples’ therapy has a long history of success with couples and is an empirically validated treatment for marital discord (Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, 1995). However, only about 50% of all couples in treatment experience long-term change (2 years). One of the founders of behavioral couples’ therapy called for the therapy to return to its original roots in functional analysis (Jacobson, 1997). This produced integrative behavioral couples’ therapy. As behavioral couples’ therapy attempts to reach the maximum number of couples possible, we believe further attention to behavior analytic principles will continue to contribute to advances in the field. We propose that an operational analysis of forgiveness will help to strengthen behavioral couples’ therapy by creating a direct module to handle some of the most entrenched situations, those commonly referred to as betrayal.