Prayer and forgiveness, gender and guilt.

Intuitively and in experience, I guess, we know this already, but as often, it is reassuring to find research that bears it out: "results showed that those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: They were more ready to forgive and move on." Blessing those who persecute us and praying for our enemies does useful things to us let aside any interaction with God. The next piece of research, however, might indicate that women may need to do it more, not because they are more vengeful but because men are less likely to feel guilty, perhaps, and so more likely, I guess, to act irritatingly and with disregard for the feelings of others. The article is here, and here's a snippet of the report commenting on the interesting thing for me because I'd not really considered that there were several forms of guilt:

The most common forms of guilt are related to situations where we cause harm to others. Stemming from this, it is normal that this arouses feelings of empathy for the people we may have harmed, which tend to turn into feelings of guilt when we recognise that we are responsible for their suffering... The anxious-aggressive kind of guilt is more common in people who have been raised in a more blame-imposing environment, and who are governed by stricter rules about behaviour in general and aggression in particular. "It seems obvious that this component will be more intense among women, and especially in older women,"

Now we should note that this, therefore, has a great deal to do with socialisation and so is not making claims for innate gender differences.
Note the role of empathy, though, in both these studies.
Prayer increases forgiveness: