Divorced Couple’s Forgiveness in Banda Aceh

Sayed Ichsan, Maya Khairani, Kartika Sari

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Syiah Kuala

Keywords: Divorce, Forgiveness, Gender, TRIM-18.

Abstract: Divorce has some impact for family, such as suffering for children and an influx of negative emotion (such

as anger, hostility, and hatefulness) between couples. Forgiveness is regarded as one of the very effective

ways to reduce said negative emotions. This study aimed to look at gender difference in forgiveness of

couples that divorced in Banda Aceh. The sample in this study were 92 subjects consisting of 46 male

(mean age 42 years) and 46 female (mean age 36 years) using purposive sampling data collection technique.

Data was collected by Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivation (TRIM)-18. The hypothesis analysis

result using Independent sample t-test showed that t=2.652 and a significancy of p=0.411 (p>0.1). Based on

the analysis result, the proposed hypothesis in this study is confirmed, which is that there is a gender

difference in forgiveness. The result of statistical calculation also showed that men’s average score is lower

than that of women’s, which is 51.54 (male) ˂ 58.47 (female). It indicates that men have a higher level of

forgiveness than women.

1 INTRODUCTION

Marriage is true pledge bond between wife and

husband which contains responsibility of both sides

(Kertamuda, 2009). Marriage commonly

experiences the change of life style and self-

adjusment to role and responsibility as a wife or a

husband. However, some individuals feel unable to

hold the new role and the new responsibility, so it

creates conflict, dispute or even divorce (Dewi &

Basti, 2008). Divorce is dissolution of marriage

status based on judge’s sentence or demand by

husband or wife in marriage (Subekti, 2003). Dariyo

(2004) explained that divorce was separation

between spouse who decided not to run the role and

the duty as the wife or husband anymore.

The divorce cases which have been rampant

lately also happen in Aceh Province. There is an

increasing number of divorces in every year from

2012 to 2015. The divorce cases reached 4,009 cases

in 2012, and increased into 4,357 cases in 2013. The

next year, the cases raised 4,801and in 2015 level up

to 5,280 cases. The increase happened in several

regencies or cities in Aceh Province, including

Banda Aceh City. The divorce cases in Banda Aceh

City increases to dozens cases every year, which

were dominated by contested divorce case (Sharia

Court of Aceh, 2016). Divorce cases in Banda Aceh

City can be seen in the table below:

Table 1: Divorce Cases in Banda Aceh City (Sharia Court

of Banda Aceh, 2016).

Year

Total Divorce Cases

Total

Talaq

Divorce

Contested

Divorce

2012

154

214

2013

186

261

2014

191

280

2015

191

259

Total

292

722

1,014

Spouse conflict can be the trigger of divorce if it

is not solved properly. Dariyo (2004) stated that the

conflicts were influenced by various factors which

were probably recorded previously, such as verbal

abuse, economy problem or economy abuses,

involvement in gambling, involvement in alcohol

abuse, and infidelity. Those factors get less serious

attention and not solved completely, so that they

influence emotional behavior of spouse and result in

the divorce.

Yaben (2009) added that divorce had negative

impact on several life aspect such as loneliness,

economic problem, physical health problem and

psychological health problem. The problems arising

Ichsan, S., Khairani, M. and Sari, K.

Divorced Couple’s Forgiveness in Banda Aceh.

DOI: 10.5220/0009567703350339

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Psychology (ICPsy 2019), pages 335-339

ISBN: 978-989-758-448-0

335

after the divorce can be reduced by forgiving the

doers’ mistakes (Root & Exline, 2011), in this case,

the doers are ex wife and husband.

Forgiveness involving emotion, mind, and

behavior as motivation to make peace with someone

hurt (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997).

McCullough and Witvliet (2002) added that

forgiveness was one of effective efforts to reduce

anger, anxiety, fear, and can change emotion and

negative behavior to be positive. Forgiving is a

condition to accept others mistake, no longer has

negative judgement, and deal with whoever hurts

(Enright, 1991; McCullough, Root, and Cohen,

2006). Forgiveness process is later on considered as

taking lessons process from the event just

happened.The violations that occur cause harm to

the victim, but if the victim can take lessons from

these mistakes, it can encourage forgiveness.

McCullough, Root, et al, (2006) explained that

forgiveness had three aspects, as follows: avoidance

motivation of doer, revenge motivation, and

benevolence motivation.

Philpot (in Gani, 2010) stated that the

forgiveness was considered as the process

containing the change of feeling and attitude toward

the doer. Most individuals who feel hurted tend to be

difficult to forgive. Miller, Worthington, and

McDaniel (2008) stated that the women are more

asier to forgive than the men. Another study by Root

and Exline (2011) also showed that the women more

willing to forgive than the men. Shackefold, Buss,

and Bennet (2002) stated that comparing to the

women, the men were more difficult to forgive

related to sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity

and tend to end the relationship if the partner

performs sexual infidelity. Forgiveness can

influence individual’s happiness, because

forgiveness is one of the most important factors in

the quality of interpersonal relationship both in men

or women. Forgiveness can be understood as

motivation change to be better relationship after the

hurting event. (McCullough, Worthington, et all,

1997).

According to the explanation above, the divorce

cases in Banda Aceh increase every year, which the

divorce in Banda Aceh can reduce the individual’s

life satisfaction. A way to bring back the life

satisfaction is through forgiveness. Therefore, the

researcher was interested in studying the difference

of forgiveness in the divorced spouse in Banda Aceh

City in term of sex.

2 RESEARCH METHOD

This study used quantitative research with

comparative research. The population in the research

was divorced spouse. The samples were chosen by

usingpurposive samplingwhich was sampling

technique. In addition, the sample criterias in this

study were: a) domiciled in Banda Aceh, b) divorce,

c) receiving divorce by ruling of Sharia Court in

Banda Aceh ranging from 2013 to 2015, and d) not

having remarriage yet during the research. The

number of involved subjects in this research was 92

persons containing 46 men and 46 women.

2.1 Collecting Data Method

Forgiveness in this study measured by using

psychological scale, i.e.TRIM-18 (Transgression-

Related Interpersonal Motivations) which was

developed by McCullough, Root, et al. (2006) and

has been adapted into Bahasa Indonesia. Adapting

instrument was conducted through translation and

back-translationprocess and tried out first to 50

samples.

2.2 Data Analysis Technique

Data analysis technique used independent samples t-

test.

3 RESULT

The categorization of forgiveness consists of

three categorizations that can be seen in table 3.

Table 2: Forgiveness Categorization in Divorced Spouse).

Score

Cate-

gorizati

Forgiven

ess

Categori-

zation

Sex

Percentage

(%)

X < 48

Low

High

23.9

41.30

48 ≤ X

< 60

Non-

catagor

ized

Non-

categoriz

21.7

28.26

X > 60

High

Low

54.3

30.43

Total

100

ICPsy 2019 - International Conference on Psychology

336

Hypothesis test result showed the significance

score t=2.652 and p=0.009 (p<0.1), it means the

proposed hypothesis was accepted which there was

the difference of forgiveness between dovorced men

and women in Banda Aceh City.

4 DISCUSSION

This present study aimed to see the difference of

forgiveness in term of sex on divorced spouse.

According to statistical analysis, there was the

significant difference of forgiveness on divorced

women and men. The result supported meta-analysis

conducted by Miller, et al (2008) that there was the

difference of forgiveness between men and women.

According to the result, the forgiveness of men was

higher than women. It was proven with average

score of forgiveness of men at 51.54 and women at

58.47. The higher the score obtained by individuals

on TRIM-18, the lower the forgiveness, and vice

versa. This is caused by two aspects of TRIM-18

indicating negative motivation (revenge and

avoidance) and one aspect that indicates positive

motivation (benevolence).

In avoidance motivation toward the doer aspect,

showed that men were easier to keep the distance,

without withdrawal, and face the hurting person than

the women. The individual who keeps away from

the person who hurts him/her is not able to forgive

yet. However, when the individual decides to

forgive, the motivation to avoid the doer, self-

withdrawal, and keeping away from the doer will be

lower. (McCullough, Fincham, & Tsang (2003).

Futhermore, on revenge motivation aspect, it was

known that the men are more able to keep the

emotion to revenge the one who hurted him than the

women. When the individual decides to forgive the

one who hurts him/her, the motivation to revenge the

one who hurts him/her will be lower (McCullough,

Fincham, et.al, 2003). While on benevolence

motivation aspect showed that the women showed

more desire to do good deeds and re-build the

relationship with the one whohurted her than the

men. The drive to do good deeds makes the

individual capable to abolish the motivation of

revenge and avoidance the hurting individual

(McCullough, Fincham, et al, 2003).

In this research, 41.30 per cent of divorced men

in Banda Aceh had higher forgiveness level than

women who had only by 23.91 per cent. The

research result is confirmed by Miller, et al (2008)

which mentioned that men easier to forgive than

women. The difference of forgiveness level between

men and women can be influenced by the group of

age. According to the study held by Ghammaghami,

Allemand and Martin (2011) on forgiveness in

several group of ages (early adulthood, middle

adulthood, and late adulthodd) in term of sex, the

forgiveness on women group tended to be more

stable in every group of age, while men tended to

change in a row with age. The study explained that

men in middle adulthood group were easier to

express the forgiveness than the men in early

adulthood. It was because the early adulthood men

had motivation to revenge higher than the middle

adulthood men. The influencing factor to individual

in forgiving was the way of thinking in facing the

proble. According to Ghammaghami, et al, (2011)

the men tended to be more difficult to forgive if it

was about working problem, while women tended to

be more difficult to forgive if it was about intimate

relatonship-related problem.

Many factors could influence individual to

forgive, such as how great the result of event is. The

divorce is an event which can create negative effect

like anger, anxiety, fear and hatred (Kertamuda,

2009), which can be reduced through forgiveness

(McCullough &Witvliet, 2002). According to the

data of this study, the factor which caused the

divorce to men subject was dominated by infidelity

(24 per cent) while the factor which caused the

divorce to women was dominated by domestic

violence (17 per cent). McCullough, Rachal,

Sandage, Worthington, Brown, and Hight (1998)

stated that the less hurt which was suffered as the

conducted punishment (transgression) and also

accepted the forgiveness of the doer (transgressor),

the easier the individual to forgive. According to

Olson, DeFrain and Skogrand (2010), the purpose of

individual to marry is to have life-span sharing

friend and have a family (companionship).

Commonly, Asian people tend to have strong family

orientation and build high education value in the

family. However, divorce in the marriage cannot be

avoided.

Olson, et al (2010) stated that several things

causing disharmony of household and ending with

divorce was bad communication, the difficulty of

making decision and dishonesty. Dishonesty is the

problem which often occurs in household.

Dishonesty in marriage is kind of infidelity or

couple manipulation, however, in several cases were

found that there were wives did not forgive on

infidelity done by the husbands and kept standing

with their household without demanding the divorce

because of financial factor like economic

dependency, and having child (Sari, 2012).

Divorced Couple’s Forgiveness in Banda Aceh

337

According to study by Dewi andSudhana (2013),

spouse’s interpersonal communication was

influencing factor on harmony of marriage.

According to Nancy (2013), harmony in household

can be realized through forgiveness made by the

spouse, by the presence of forgiveness, conflict

between husband and wife can be solved well and

can create harmonic family.

In research process, the researcher realized that

there were shortcoming and limitation in this

research. First, data in this research was taken by

using purposive sampling technique, so that the total

of obtained data was unproportional in every sub-

district, thefore the result cannot be generalized.

Second, it was difficult for the researcher to find the

subject who met the characteristics of the research.

Third, collecting data technique was not conducted

directly by the researcher, however the data was

collected by the enumerator. It caused there were

three subjects did not fill the questionnaire because

of divorce, thus this study was not able to reveal the

divorce reason of all subjects.

5 CONCLUSION

This study aimed to see the difference of forgiveness

on divorce spouse in Banda Aceh City. The result

showed that there was the difference of forgiveness

between divorced men and divorced women in

Banda Aceh City. The result showed that divorced

men was able to more forgive than divorced women

because men tended to face the pressure of working-

related problem while women tended to feel stressed

in facing intimate relationship-related problem.

Another factor which made men easier to forgive

was age factor, middle adulthood men was easier to

forgive than early adulthood men.

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