You think a clear boundary needs to be set with the child. Your partner thinks more space should be given. You feel he’s leaving you alone in the role of the parent who sets limits. He feels you’re dismissing his way of being a father.
Within a few minutes, the conversation is no longer just about parenting.
You try to explain why consistency matters. He explains why you’re too strict. The tone shifts, defensiveness rises, and each of you is increasingly occupied with proving your position. Beneath the argument about the child are already other questions: Do you see me? Do you trust me? Is there room for my way? Are we really a team?
This also happens in arguments about money, families of origin, division of household responsibility, sexuality, or the time each person asks for themselves. We start with a particular topic, and within a short time find ourselves also fighting for our place within the relationship.
Ho’oponopono offers a way to pause the struggle for a moment. Not to decide who’s right, but to check:
Ho’oponopono is a practice originating in Hawaiian culture, designed to resolve disputes and restore damaged relationships to a state of order and reconciliation. Traditionally it took place within families and communities and included conversation, acknowledgment of harm, taking responsibility, forgiveness, and resolution of the conflict.
The version most of us know today differs from the traditional practice. During the twentieth century a personal version of Ho’oponopono developed that can also be practiced alone. This version is associated with the four sentences that have spread around the world:
“I’m sorry.”
“Please forgive me.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
I like to relate to these four sentences not as a formula meant to resolve conflict, but as an invitation to pause and look. They allow me to turn my gaze for a moment from the person in front of me to myself and check what my part is in what’s happening between us.
The goal is not to make my partner change, forgive me, or come closer to me. I can use the four sentences to clarify how I want to act even when I have no control over his response.
Parenting is one of the places where the personal history of both partners meets the life they’re trying to build together.
Each of us comes to parenting from a different family. We learned different things about authority, boundaries, freedom, responsibility, anger, discipline, and indulgence. One grew up in a home where boundaries were clear and rigid, another grew up in a home where there were almost no boundaries. One wants to give the children the freedom she herself needed, another asks to give them the stability that was missing for him.
So an argument about bedtime, screens, studies, money, or boundaries isn’t always just a discussion about what’s right for the child. It can also touch deeper questions:
The more charged these questions become, the harder it is to see the person in front of us. We’re reacting to what’s happening now and also to the meaning we’re giving to what’s happening.
Our history can help us understand the intensity of the reaction. It does not determine how we act with it today.
The sentences “I’m sorry” and “Please forgive me” can trigger resistance, especially when I’m convinced the person in front of me is the one who hurt me.
It’s important to me to distinguish between guilt and responsibility.
Taking responsibility is not accepting blame for everything that happens in the relationship. It is not giving up my boundaries and it is not agreeing to behavior that hurts me. I can think the person in front of me was wrong and still be interested in my part in the dynamic that was created.
I can check how I spoke, what I did when I felt threatened, where I closed off, where I attacked, and which of my responses pushed us further apart.
For me this is one of the meanings of worthiness within relationship: the ability to look at my behavior honestly and ask Is this how I want to act when I’m hurt?
My pain deserves space. The person in front of me also deserves space. My responsibility is to choose how I want to meet both.
The first sentence invites me to acknowledge that something painful happened between us. I don’t need to take responsibility for the whole story in order to see my part in it.
I may be sorry for the tone in which I spoke, for closing off, for a sentence I said in order to hurt, for not listening, or for the way my fear turned into criticism.
“I’m sorry” doesn’t have to be a sentence of guilt. It can be a sentence of recognition and responsibility.
There’s a big difference between “I’m a bad person because I hurt you” and “I acted in a way that isn’t worthy in my eyes, and I’m willing to see that.”
The second possibility doesn’t diminish me. It returns to me the ability to choose.
Asking for forgiveness does not obligate the person in front of me to forgive me.
It’s possible to ask for forgiveness and leave the other person the freedom to feel what they feel. They can still be hurt, angry, need time, or choose not to come closer right now.
Part of my responsibility is the ability to bear the possibility that my apology won’t immediately bring the response I want.
If I’m asking for forgiveness only so you’ll stop being angry at me, the request for forgiveness becomes a way to manage your feeling in order to calm mine. A request for forgiveness from a differentiated position sounds different: I see that I hurt you, I take responsibility for my part, and I recognize that your response belongs to you.
“Please forgive me” is a sentence I can offer. Forgiveness itself is not something I can demand.
“Thank you” within conflict can sound strange. For me, it isn’t an attempt to forcibly find something positive within pain. It can be an acknowledgment that the person in front of me still matters to me and that there’s a connection between us I want to nurture.
Gratitude doesn’t cancel the conflict and doesn’t obligate me to agree. It allows me to see that our relationship is larger than the moment we’re in right now.
Within a fight we can forget for a moment that we’re standing in front of a person we love. The person in front of me can become a problem that needs to be solved, a threat I need to defend against, or someone I have to convince.
“I love you” reminds me of the relationship within which the conflict is taking place.
Love is a feeling. The way I behave toward you is a choice.
The fact that I love you doesn’t exempt me from the responsibility to check how I speak to you when I’m hurt. By the same token, my love for you doesn’t obligate me to agree with you, give up a boundary, or stay in a conversation that isn’t good for me.
It’s possible to love and be angry. It’s possible to love and set a boundary. It’s possible to love and disagree. It’s possible to love and ask for distance.
The question isn’t only Do I love you? but also How do I want to love you?
I find an interesting connection between these four sentences and differentiation.
Differentiation is the ability to stay in relationship with another person without leaving myself. I can hear your pain without agreeing with everything you say. I can see my part without taking responsibility for your part. I can love you and hold a position different from yours.
The practice doesn’t ask me to surrender. It invites me to return to myself before I return to you and check:
There’s another question I especially like: Can I say what’s important to me even if the person in front of me doesn’t receive it the way I hope?
Differentiation isn’t measured only in the moment when we agree. It’s also revealed in my ability to stay connected to myself and respect the person in front of me when we’re different, when they’re disappointed in me, or when their response isn’t the one I wanted to receive.
The more I’m able to bear the feeling that arises in me without acting immediately from it, the more my possibility to choose how to respond expands.
In family constellation work we’re also interested in what each partner brings from their family of origin.
This is especially prominent around parenting. When a child is born, it’s not just two parenting approaches that meet. Two families also meet, two childhoods, and two systems of beliefs about the way a family is supposed to function.
When I react with great intensity to my partner’s parenting choice, it’s possible to be interested in what it’s meeting within me. When it’s very hard for me to allow him to do things differently from me, it’s possible to ask what meaning I’m giving to the difference between us. When I feel I have to convince him I’m right, it’s possible to check what frightens me about the possibility that he’ll remain in a different position.
The goal is not to turn every disagreement into a story about childhood. The look at the past helps us understand what we’re bringing into the present. My history explains part of my sensitivities. It is not responsible for the way I behave toward the person in front of me today.
It’s possible to honor the story I came from and ask: What from this do I want to continue carrying, and what do I want to do differently in the family I’m building today?
It’s possible to use the four sentences toward ourselves as well.
After a fight in which I said things I’m sorry for, I can see that I behaved in a way that isn’t worthy in my eyes without turning myself into a person who isn’t worthy of love.
If I turn a mistake into proof that something in me is flawed, it’s hard for me to stay stable enough to see my behavior honestly. If I exempt myself from responsibility in the name of self-compassion, I have no reason to change.
Worthiness allows holding both things together: my value as a person doesn’t disappear when I make a mistake, and my value doesn’t exempt me from the responsibility to repair when I’ve hurt someone.
I can say to myself:
In my view, this is mature self-compassion. It gives me enough ground to take responsibility and choose differently.
There’s no need to turn the practice into a complex ritual. It’s possible to use it the moment you feel the conversation is no longer leading to the place you want to reach.
Pause for a moment. Feel the soles of your feet on the ground and notice your breath. There’s no need to force yourself to calm down. The goal is to create a bit more space between what you’re feeling and what you’re about to do.
Say the four sentences quietly to yourself:
“I’m sorry.”
“Please forgive me.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
Notice what happens when you say each one. Which sentence is easy for you to say? Which sentence triggers resistance? Where do you feel it in your body?
You can add a small movement that suits you: placing a hand on your chest, opening your palms slightly, straightening up, or feeling your feet on the ground. Movement can help you stay connected to the experience while you’re saying the words.
Then ask yourself:
Only then check if it’s right for you to return to the conversation.
The goal is not to reach a calm conversation at any cost. The goal is to return to it from more choice and from a greater ability to stand behind the way you’re behaving.
If the practice suits both of you, it’s possible to use it as a couple as well. It’s important that it be an invitation and not a demand. Both partners don’t need to connect to the same language or the same practice.
You can choose a moment when you’re both relatively calm and talk about the four sentences. Instead of repeating them automatically, you can use them as four doorways into conversation:
Each person is responsible for their own answers. No one is obligated to answer the way the other hopes.
A conversation like this doesn’t guarantee the conflict will disappear. It can allow two people to remain separate, responsible, and close even within disagreement.
Ho’oponopono is not a magic solution to fights in relationships. The four sentences cannot replace honest conversation, boundaries, listening, or taking responsibility.
They can offer a pause. Instead of continuing immediately to the next sentence in the argument, I can return for a moment to myself, see my pain, identify my part, and remember that in front of me is a person separate from me, with their own pain, desires, and boundaries.
“I’m sorry.”
“Please forgive me.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
The value of these sentences is not measured by whether my partner calmed down, forgave me, or came closer to me. The more interesting question is: Who am I choosing to be within this relationship even when the person in front of me isn’t responding the way I hoped?
For me, that’s where love, worthiness, and differentiation meet. Not in the ability to make conflict disappear, but in the ability to meet it without losing myself and without losing the person in front of me.
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