Staying in Relationship: Parts, Forgiveness, and the Limits of Being Human

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about parts – not in the abstract, but in the deeply practical, day-to-day way that determines whether relationships survive strain or quietly fall apart.

This reflection has been shaped by several threads converging at once: my ongoing work around parts with the Crappy Childhood Fairy Anna Runkle, insights from Jessica Fern’s writing on attachment and relational shapes, a sermon I heard recently at Riverside, and two quotes that are often framed as opposites – but, I believe, are not.

The first quote is from Maya Angelou:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

The other is attributed to Jesus, when asked how often one must forgive:

“Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

At first glance, these seem irreconcilable. One sounds like a warning. The other like an impossible moral demand. One urges clarity. The other endurance. One seems to say protect yourself. The other, to keep loving people even after they wrong you.

But I don’t think they’re in conflict at all. I think they’re describing different capacities – and different limits – of being human.

Seeing Clearly Is Not the Same as Giving Up

Parts work begins with a deceptively simple idea: people are not a single, unified self. We are made up of parts – protective parts, wounded parts, adaptive parts, generous parts, fearful parts – each shaped by experience and context.

When Maya Angelou tells us to “believe someone the first time,” I don’t hear a command to exile them from our lives. I hear an invitation to see clearly. To stop arguing with reality. To stop explaining away patterns that are actually consistent.

Believing someone the first time doesn’t require hatred or judgment. It requires honesty.

It means recognizing: This part of you shows up reliably; this behavior is not accidental; this dynamic is not new.

Clarity is not cruelty. It’s orientation.

Forgiveness Is Not Amnesia

Forgiveness, especially as framed in Christian teaching, is often misunderstood as endless tolerance or self-erasure. But forgiveness does not mean pretending harm didn’t happen. It does not mean trusting parts of someone that have repeatedly proven unsafe. And it certainly does not mean granting unlimited access.

Forgiveness is an internal practice before it is an external one.

It is about releasing the fantasy that we can punish someone into becoming who we wish they were. It is about refusing to let resentment become the organizing force of our inner world.

You can forgive someone seventy-seven times and still say:

• This part of you does not get decision-making power.

• This part of you does not get proximity.

• This part of you does not get to define reality.

Forgiveness clears the heart.

Boundaries protect the nervous system.

Parts Make It Possible to Stay

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself – only recently, and with some curiosity – is that I can often stay in relationships with people, where others feel forced to cut ties entirely.

That’s not because I tolerate bad behavior (though I’ll be the first to admit I’m imperfect in this area). It’s because I don’t collapse a whole person into one part.

I can genuinely like and value some parts of a person – their creativity, their humor, their care – while strongly disagreeing with or even disliking other parts of them. I don’t need to pretend those parts don’t exist. And I don’t need to exile the entire person because of them.

Parts work makes this possible.

Without it, the options feel binary:

• Stay and self-abandon

• Or leave and protect yourself

Parts introduce a third way:

Stay in relationship with discernment.

The Limits of What We Can Do

This all came into sharper focus for me during a recent sermon by Rev. Adrienne Thorne at Riverside Church. At one point, she said something that stopped me short:

"I am not Jesus. I am not able to save people... I want to make a difference in the world, but I am limited by my humanity."

There was something deeply relieving in hearing even a pastor speak that out loud.

So much relational suffering comes from trying to do what no human can do:

• Save someone from themselves

• Heal wounds they don’t acknowledge

• Override parts they are not willing to face

Parts work is, at its core, an act of humility.

It asks us to accept that:

• We can see clearly, but we cannot control outcomes

• We can forgive, but we cannot force transformation

• We can love, but we cannot save

  
  

Clarity and Compassion Can Coexist

Maya Angelou and Jesus are not offering opposing instructions. One teaches us how to see. The other teaches us how to love without self-betrayal. Parts work is what makes it possible to do both at the same time.

Believe people when they show you who they are, which parts show up, and when.

Forgive, not to keep the door open to harm, but to keep your own heart from hardening.

You are allowed to care deeply AND stand firmly in reality. Staying in relationship does not mean saving, fixing, or erasing parts of yourself — or anyone else.

Sometimes, it simply means accepting – again and again – the limits of our humanity.