What are YOUR thoughts about 'forgiveness'?

[JennyWren]

What an intriguing thread.

Forgiveness.

At first, on surface value, I thought I knew my feelings on forgiveness....but on reflection...and reading the posts here....I got more and more confused!  ......so much so...I found myself looking at definitions of "Forgiveness"

And that was interesting. Because the definitions are very different...and based on varied personal beliefs.

'to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt'. - Oxford English Dictionary

"The word “forgive” means to wipe the slate clean, to pardon, to cancel a debt." - allaboutgod.com

"Forgiveness is the process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger against another person for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution." - selfgrowth.com

You see....there is no way on this planet...or any other for that matter...I will be "ceasing to feel"...eg indignation toward BigBird.....so if that IS part of forgiveness...I won`t be on the Forgiveness Train.

However....I can eventually get to the stage of wiping slates clean mentally....AS LONG AS BIGBIRD STAYS AWAY FROM ME!!!

What I will never EVER be able to do is be within 60 feet of my ex and feel a serene calm "All water under the bridge" kind of forgiveness...simply because HE IS STILL AN N...and he is still all the things he ever was.

BigBird`s Golden Boy brother used to bang on about "Drawing lines in the sand" and forgiving all past transgressions and making a new start. Without any learnt understanding of the past behaviour. Just free reign to do it all again...and then draw another "forgiveness" line in the sand....and go again. He considers anyone who will not do this bitter.

So.....I think MoreMyself has it in a nutshell....

It's personal and shouldn't be defined by what other people think it is or what any religions or self-help gurus define it to be. 

And...in fact...I agree with all that she says in her post.

With Ns particularly...it isn`t useful to forget...or to lose the anger...because they haven`t moved on one inch. And while very noble to "turn the other cheek" for another good emotional slapping...Ns will wallop you good every time. And we best remember that.

I did extend BigBird forgiveness repeatedly when he said how sorry he was in the beginning that he had rekindled his "True Love" with mad ex-gf over Facebook. What he was actually saying was that he was terrified because she was "Coming to get him".

Later...he confessed that he felt I had forgiven him too easily...and this meant I didn`t love him properly...and was proof that I was only after his money. After all....he would not have forgiven me AT ALL.

To an N...forgiveness is a pole with which to vault cleanly over their revolting behaviour...never give it a second glance...but then to condemn you for being stupid enough to forgive them in the first place.

But we are not Ns...and our own forgiveness has nothing to do with them really. It is more about how we come to terms with the past...and make sense of the horrors most productively for our own future. Whatever sits most comfortably day to day. Sometimes I feel very sorry for BigBird being such a jerk from a family of jerks. Sometimes I want to pull his head off and stuff him with gunpowder...and actually..however I feel is OK with me.

Feeling you should forgive is terribly unhelpful. Accepting the past...and my feelings about it is my aim.

[Never again]

All of that took me HOURS to read. And I'm supposed to be working this morning. But sometimes the work on myself just takes priority.

So .. What I often find on WoN is that it validates what were my very first, gut-instinct feelings about LOTS of things in that soul-destroying relationship I experienced. Unfortunately, many times those gut instincts were denied and invalidated and squashed by a few different people:

- myself
- Gobi Shiite
- some of my friends

If I had given more credence to what I felt as opposed to what I and others told me, I would have saved myself an awful lot of trouble. Now I come here to read that what I felt was and is felt as well by hundreds of people who found themselves in similar situations. It's like coming home to myself again. So until I learn to trust myself entirely, I'm going to take very seriously what I read here. I feel in safe hands. 

It's interesting, Jenny, that the linguistic definitions of forgiveness make no mention of the other side of forgiveness that numerous people on this thread have mentioned: A perceived lack of remorse on the part of the perpetrator is a HUGE obstacle to forgiveness. That was what I used to feel when he would tell me I was unforgiving and bearing a grudge .. When he still hadn't apologised or even acknowledged any wrongdoing. I felt it was bizarre, and now with my head almost out of the fog, I can say it was indeed bizarre.

I would have loved to forgive him, but how could I when he was still denying the realities of his behaviour, so it was clear that nothing was ever going to change?

The other useful thing on this thread for me is the whole question of forgiving myself for having allowed someone manipulate and abuse me for so long, and that's what I'm very happy to work on in therapy. And maybe it sounds weird, and in fact I haven't quite got my head around how it could work in practice, but,

- given the majority consensus here on not being able to forgive where there is no remorse, and
- given the fact that I myself was among the people who invalidated my own feelings,

well now it seems to me that I somehow have to *ask myself* for forgiveness, *show myself* remorse, before I can actually forgive myself. Does that sound nuts?

One more thing and then it's really down to work ... I have a relationship in my past where I was very badly hurt (overnight discard basically). I never saw the person again and it took me years to get over the pain and the anger. Today I would say I have detached in that I can remember the incident without an emotional reaction, but I haven't forgiven the betrayal. I'd imagine that's where I'll end up with regard to Gobi Shiite too. Forget yes, forgive no.

Never again

[kindheart]

Forgiveness - it is a word we all understand but yet it is difficult to explain forgiveness.  For me, letting go of my feelings of resentment towards someone is forgiveness.  I have just begun to begin the process of letting go of my resentment of ex nf.  And letting go of my feelings of resentment is giving me a sense of relief and a release from my emotional pain. 

At the end of the day, she is narcissistic, she acted like she did because she is disordered. I forgive her for my benefit, not hers.  She doesn't want or ask for my forgiveness.  I don't need to verbalise my forgiveness to her.   My feelings of resentment towards here and my not letting go was beginning to make me feel toxic. 

[pearlsb4swine]

Important topic!

I think we get confused with definitions when we talk about forgiveness.  Some of us are talking about our own internal process when we think about the one who injured us, and some of us are talking about our relationship going forward with that person.

For me, forgiveness means that the slate is wiped clean between me and the transgressor.  That I participate in the relationship and contribute to it as if the transgression had never happened.  That is a very tall order, but I think it is possible IF the transgressor is truly sorry, and has made amends for the transgression.  REALLY made amends.  SusyP14 included a link in a post a while back, to "What make narcissists tick" by Kathy Krajco (sp?) that had a nice explanation of what is called for when making amends.  A little bit of the fog cleared for me when I read it (thanks Susy!)

What she says is that to truly make amends for a transgression, you have to heal the entire offense. You have to return ALL the money, PLUS an extra percentage.  You more than make up for what you did.  If you are truly sorry, you are willing and actually eager to do so.

In my marriage to my xnh, I settled for less than that in the way of amends for all his abuses.  When he did his N thing, I DID get angry.  Sometimes very angry.  And we would argue, argue, argue.  I can stick to my guns if I know I am right.  And usually after a few days or so, depending on the seriousness of the issue, I would get a grudging apology.  And I would be so grateful for that, and so eager to put the unpleasantness behind us, that I would forgive him and move on.  It was cheap forgiveness, and it wasn't worth much, because in my heart I knew that he wasn't really that sorry and had not made amends.  I rationalized by telling myself that because of his N issues, apologizing was very difficult for him, and therefore it was a big deal.  That his apologies were worth more because they were rare and hard to come by!  And now I think about what those apologies really meant.  Now I understand that he lied all the time.  ALL THE TIME!  And that he was probably furious with me for dragging those apologies out of him, and the only reason he apologized at all was to turn the N supply back on.  He hated it when I was angry or cool to him.  N supply was like sunshine to him.  He had to have it.   And over time, he got angrier and angrier at me for expecting him to be human and that finally erupted in the offense that broke up our marriage.

I don't expect to ever forgive him, because I don't expect he will ever comprehend the damage he did to me and really be  sorry.  He will never make amends.  How could he possibly make up for what he did?  What's he going to do, give me a kidney or something?  Mow my lawn for the rest of his life?  Even if he did, the rest of his life would not be long enough for him to really and truly make up for what he did to me.  My kidneys are in better shape than his anyway.

The state I am trying to achieve is not forgiveness.  I don't think it's the "spiritually correct" thing in my case.  But that does not have to stop me from praying for him or seeing him as a child of God.  But I will do that from a safe distance.   I want to be able to really pray for him, with my whole heart, instead of fantasizing about running him over with my car!


Pearls

[Chime]

Forgiveness (and Black Holes)
To me it's like a debt.  An energetic debt. 
Yes, OH YES, he owes me big time, but continuing to try to collect on, or clear that debt keeps me energetically attached to him.  Any focus on it keeps making the debt bigger.  It allows him to keep renting space in my head.  I am just wasting my time.  It drains me.  I need to cut my losses, and forgive the debt.  Give up my claim on this black hole account.  An account from which I will never collect, and which could swallow me up.  [And if Stephen Hawking is right, I think maybe I've spent 30 years in this black hole, only to be spit out of it when Alice-So-And-So fell into it.  Poor thing.]

But “forgive” for me is always attached to “forget”
And here is where I feel like I can draw out the difference.
FORGET? NEVER! This is where my lessons are.

So for me, forgiving is not an act of saying what happened is ok. It's not believing that it needed to happen, or that I brought it on myself, or that I wouldn't have been better served in this world if it had never happened.  Not at all.  Forgiving this energetic debt helps me begin to end its power over me.  It's what I do for me. 
However I'll never forget.

Chime

[Rosemary]

No i dont forgive him, for the almighty mess he made of this family, both myself and our   2 children that i mostly brought up alone ,all the money i lost on property, and the terrible financial mess ive had to sort out for myself to go on .
This is besides not working/alcholism/running off with woman /and all the LIES .
NO he wouldnt have forgiven me in the slightest.   .In fact he feels he has done   NO   WRONG !!! so why should i forgive something he hasnt done ??? Nutter !!!!     

[CZBZ]

I also spent two hours reading through this thread...it is amazing. A fine example of healthy interaction as a group---being brave enough to share our thoughts wherever we might be in the journey. (It's always a little weird to read what you wrote in the past.  ) I guess that's another cool thing about message boards, noticing how your thinking might change over the years.

I was struck by something Never Again wrote. She said:

"If I had given more credence to what I felt as opposed to what I and others told me, I would have saved myself an awful lot of trouble. Now I come here to read that what I felt was and is felt as well by hundreds of people who found themselves in similar situations. It's like coming home to myself again. So until I learn to trust myself entirely, I'm going to take very seriously what I read here. I feel in safe hands." ~Never Again

I've been on several forums and reviewed other forums and on WoN, we don't enforce rules on what people need to do. This is an "I" forum. We claim our own process. By that I mean that people talk about, write about, and discuss themselves...their behavior, what's right for them, where they are in this 'journey'. The more we claim our own process, the less controlling we are of other people's process.

I think and hope others agree with me, that WoN is about getting to know yourself and accepting yourself. I am glad you feel safe here, never again because one of the primary goals and 'needs' for our community is finding a 'safe place' for learning and healing.

I also wanted to comment on something else Never Again wrote and that is "trusting yourself." When I first discovered how cruel my husbaNd could be after finding out about his affair, my initial reaction was to hold HIM accountable 100% and enforce fairly strict boundaries between us about that.

Then I started reading self-help books about infidelity, shadow work (taking responsibility for your own shadow) and other books like that. I got confused.

My boundaries weakened and i tried to be bone-chillingly honest about 'my' weaknesses in an attempt to initiate a safe place for my hubbie to face his own weaknesses (this is how normal relationships function).

I lost my sense of self in all this self-help claptrap that was never intended for pathological relationships. Although, let's face it, most people don't believe pathological people even exist. They still believe that IF you can get through protective defenses, a loving knight-in-shining-armor will emerge. Yea, well maybe he does...but he cuts your head off with his flaming sword of truth lies.

I wish I had trusted my natural instincts to protect myself...the books I bought to help myself were actually driving me crazier than my X. 

Hugs,
CZ

[loved2much]

Howdy.....again we have perfect timing within our selves here in our brave little community!

Today I received an email from the NX..."I hate you"...so I opened it and it said:  "for stealing from me."

I replied:  I never stole anything from you!

Now I'm wondering what is he up to?  I could have replied more...perhaps I shouldn't have said anything.  How strange to hear from him....and it's been 8 months now and he says that I stole from him???  What about all the money I gave him, the free rent for years, the care and love and respect I lavished on him?    Isn't he happy with his new life and love anymore that he has to hate me....for stealing?  what??

Just more of his pitiful drama. 
I actually cried during the holiday...I missed me and him and us?  I got depressed and I have prayed for him....and he send me this crap.

What did I steal?
His integrity?
His honor?
His respect?
His good reputation?
His friends?
His free meal ticket in life?
His heart full of love?
Huh....
I am so glad to let go and let God in this regard...
Definitely feeling the healing today...
8 months later and I'm beginning to see the light!

[alatariel]

In my marriage to my xnh, I settled for less than that in the way of amends for all his abuses.  When he did his N thing, I DID get angry.  Sometimes very angry.  And we would argue, argue, argue.  I can stick to my guns if I know I am right.  And usually after a few days or so, depending on the seriousness of the issue, I would get a grudging apology.  And I would be so grateful for that, and so eager to put the unpleasantness behind us, that I would forgive him and move on.  It was cheap forgiveness, and it wasn't worth much, because in my heart I knew that he wasn't really that sorry and had not made amends.  I rationalized by telling myself that because of his N issues, apologizing was very difficult for him, and therefore it was a big deal.  That his apologies were worth more because they were rare and hard to come by! 

Ah.  So YOU were married to troll's just-as-evil-twin, too, or would that be triplet?  Quadruplet?  Quintuplet?  Just how many spiritual siblings does she have, anyway?  'Cuz that's how it worked for me, too.  I'd finally get angry enough at her shite that I'd stop talking to her, sometimes after saying something cutting to her, sometimes not.  And then after a while I'd get those phone calls, texts or emails "apologizing" to me, and I'd be so eager to put the unpleasantness behind us that I'd accept and we'd "move on".  Once her own mother told me that "[troll] doesn't apologize to anyone, or ever admit she was wrong", and I was surprised, b/c she had "apologized" to me a couple of times.  So I rationalized that her "apologies" were a huge deal and I should actually feel better and even slightly honored that I got one.

It's only now that I realize that she never actually apologized.  Her apologies were basically along the lines of, "I'm sorry you made me mad".  That's not an apology, that's blame.

Loved2, I'm sorry to hear that rat bazzturd contacted you.  But, you did steal from him: you stole yourself!!  You get your self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence back!  HA!  Take that, you rat bazzturd.

[pearlsb4swine]

Alatariel, All Ns must be cloned from the same master N.  They are all so much alike it is freakish! 

Loved2much, you sound like you are doing great!  You rebounded more quickly from the "holiday heartache" than me.  I was very blue over Christmas.  I guess it's to be expected.  You don't break up a three decade marriage without shedding a few tears.  Better now, thank goodness.

Pearls

[alatariel]

It's gotta' be the Borg.  They're all controlled by the Collective.

To me it's like a debt.  An energetic debt.
Yes, OH YES, he owes me big time, but continuing to try to collect on, or clear that debt keeps me energetically attached to him.  Any focus on it keeps making the debt bigger.  It allows him to keep renting space in my head.  I am just wasting my time.  It drains me.  I need to cut my losses, and forgive the debt.  Give up my claim on this black hole account.  An account from which I will never collect, and which could swallow me up.

I love the way you put that, Chime, and ITA.  That's how I feel about dickhead.  It's an account I'm never going to collect on, so I just have to let it go for my sake.  I can hate him momentarily, when he does some specific thing to annoy me, but I can't hate him continually.  That consumes too much of my energy, and I need all of my energy just to live my life.  And, for the first time in my life, all my energy can be focused ON living my life, instead of on looking after an N.

[Chime]

Huh....
I am so glad to let go and let God in this regard...
Definitely feeling the healing today...
8 months later and I'm beginning to see the light!

Excellent!     Good on you!!
Alatariel nailed it -- he lost you, but you gained you! 
 
Chime

[Chime]

And, for the first time in my life, all my energy can be focused ON living my life...

YAY! You're worth it!   

And YES!  I too am beginning to see that y'all weren't spying on me, but living parallel lives.  (I think there really might be something to this black hole idea lol)
and that there is some Borg thing going on... 
Chime

[loved2much]

["thats not entirely accurate but I'm not doing to discuss it any further because of your negative attitude."]

Hey the NX said the same thing to me too! 

[daisyk9292]

I've gone back and forth like a freakin ping pong ball on the forgiveness thing. I absolutely could never stand hearing or reading things about how not forgiving causes you terrible stress and strain, health problems, mental problems, relationship problem etc.

So with the N I have prayed and prayed asking for strength, stating I was "willing" to forgive, but nothing. It just has never truly come.

Here's where I am today. I am a forgiving person. I always have been. Except towards myself. Right now that is the ONLY forgiveness I must find.

As far as the N? Nope, never, I refuse and quite frankly believe I get a "No need to forgive" pass on this one. Why? Because he "hooked" me with "I am so sorry for what I did to you in the past, will you please forgive me?" So I did, and he ripped me to shreds!!!!

Even if he came back again, which he won't, and asked me for forgiveness how on earth could I EVER believe he was sincere? Obviously I couldn't.

So asking for it or not this one will NEVER, EVER, receive any forgiveness for me. I can live with that just fine thank you very much.