At the heart of the personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.
"Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you." Ephesian 4:32
Since we are all broken and flawed, finding that sense of being lovable depends on knowing, deep at the core of our being, that we are forgiven - that all our brokenness has been covered - that we are good enough. Without that persistent awareness, we tend to live out of a pervasive sense of inadequacy. Our attempts to be loving people, instead of springing from knowing we are loved, become attempts to somehow prove that we are good enough to deserve being loved. We feign surprise when we are not as loving as we would like to be.
But God has a different plan. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
How do we genuinely become more loving and forgiving people? It begins, not with striving to be that kind of person, but acknowledging that we are not, then receiving the forgiveness lavishly offered to us through the gift of Christ's sacrifice. As we acknowledge that we are not good enough based on our performance, we open the door to receive from God the awareness that He has made us good enough because God, in Christ, has forgiven us. Knowing that energizes the heart at the deepest level. We can either spend our days working really hard at being good, loving people, hoping we are good enough, or we can begin by admitting that we fail at this every day and receiving the "lovable" identity as a gift. Many, if not all, of our relationship problems flow out of feeling inferior and trying to fix ourselves.