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I’ve been seeing much lately (in various places) about forgiveness. Today there was an article in our Sunday newspaper about it, and in watching Shrinking (Apple TV series) the topic came up as well.

I will admit it took me years to forgive my H. I’d like to think about 5-6 years is the timespan.

The article I read this morning defined forgiveness as "the point where you no longer seek revenge even though you could act". I thought this was funny at first but then wondered if this is true.

In the series Shrinking, the story centers around a therapist and his daughter who were impacted a year prior when a drunk driver hit their mom/wife’s car and she died as a result of the accident.

The dad, who is a therapist, just couldn’t cope and turned to drinking and pills to hide his pain. The neighbors started caring for the daughter to help out.

The daughter (18) meets with the drunk driver and while initially angry — she forgives him and they become friends. Her father finds out and feels betrayed and angry. The daughter tells her therapist how she feels better and less angry now that she has "moved forward".

All that led me to wonder how does forgiveness play a role in our healing as the BS? Does it matter if we forgive — as part of reconciliation?

Are we less happy if we do not forgive?

Interested in hearing from others about this.

PS - I think this is a very hard thing to do BTW

I think how egregious the cheating was is whether there can ever be forgiveness or not. In my case it was while he was traveling and both of us still young and stupid. I did not confront until yrs later. I asked, he admitted. We had matured, life went on. I have no feelings about it at all unless I pop on here.
If it involved cruelty(shaming, screaming, insults etc) I don’t see ever forgiving. Human nature is designed to remember danger. There is nothing but rape and murder more dangerous to the human psyche than being lied to, and cheated on. The longer it goes on the more "dangerous" it is. We are like elephants, we never forget.

Janis Spring, PhD, wrote a great book about forgiveness. I read it many years ago based on member recommendations.

I forgave my exww long ago. It is a release of a debt that could never be repaid. It's a good step, I think, on a healing journey, one that takes years to reach.

I believe I can forgive WW for the affair as a person. What I mean by that is that as someone not my wife, as herself who massively fucked up, I can forgive that. As my wife, no I can’t. It’s unforgivable. There’s no forgiveness for an affair as a couple. Especially combined with the gaslighting, degradation, and honestly risking my health. I haven’t figured out everything by any means, but I have come to accept that she cheated on me.

I also don’t believe in an affair is forgivable as long as x y or z doesn’t happen. Cheating is a decision, and crossing the line is a deliberate act.

I believe in acceptance.

I think it is possible to move through the pain of infidelity and get to a place of not wanting to seek revenge, not wallowing, not stewing over it, but not forgiving it. It probably boils down to a semantic argument for some, but the distinction is meaningful to me. I don't label it as forgiveness. We all come to terms with the trauma of infidelity in whatever way works for us. And that's what works for me.

I do believe some things are unforgivable. The deliberate act of knowingly harming and causing trauma is, for me, one of those things.

[This message edited by PurpleMoxie at 2:03 AM, Monday, August 25th]

My wife will never hear me say I forgive you. Not once have I been cruel or mean or degrading towards her during our attempt to R. She destroyed 27 years of trust for purely selfish reasons and had the balls to get angry at me when I confronted her.

I don't hold what she did over her head but I will never say I forgive you.

I immediately after DDay educated myself on how a betrayer gets to the point of betraying their spouse. I learned about the steps it took to get there, how the dopamine rush becomes like an addiction, about how perhaps their mental state of mind leading into the affair could be affected by the state of the marriage. I learned about all of that so that I could better understand my WW’s position. I have forgiven her for the actual affair. What I couldn’t forgive her for was the complete lack of effort to repair the damage she had done to the marriage, the complete lack of remorse and empathy, and the emotional abuse through anger and distancing she parlayed onto me every time I felt sad about the affair or her lack of work to reconcile.

Interesting topic! And makes me think hard on a Monday Morning.

As I am not fully coffee'd this post may be a bit all over the place :)

I think we are in a society that is too quick to jump to forgiveness for atrocities.

I think forgiveness should be earned. Proven behavior over time.

I feel redemption is something that someone can strive for. I think forgiveness can be earned. I feel that forgiveness for atrocities is something that over time can happen if all the stars align and are maintained.

It took me YEARS to forgive my WH. I can still remember the feeling of forgiveness that washed over me, when, where, what I was wearing AND the song that was playing.

But...what took longer yet gave me the most peace was forgiving myself. Forgiving myself for feeling that this was my fault somehow. Forgive myself for thinking that I wasn't "enough". Forgiving myself for not knowing what I didn't know when I didn't know it. Forgiving myself for having blind faith trust even when I probably shouldn't have. Forgive myself. THAT gave me a peace I can't describe. It took years. It took work. It took strength. I resented most of it. But I had to experience this journey. And in forgiving myself - the victim - the collateral damage of someone else's sickness - I found my peace.

"the point where you no longer seek revenge even though you could act".

I think that's one definition of many for 'forgiveness'.

I never could come up with a way to punish my W without adding to my own pain, so forgiving helped me. But it slipped up on me. I never set forgiveness as a goal, and I don't think I noticed when it happened. One day I just woke up and realized I hadn't thought of revenge for a long while. A couple of years later, I mentioned it in a post that y W read, and it was a big deal to her. It still isn't a big deal for me.

I 'forgave' my W on d-day, too, as a way of keeping myself from ruminating about 'How could she do this to me?' and 'Why me?' That forgiveness was definitely for me, and it definitely helped - when I felt sorry for myself, I cut the process short by reminding me that I 'forgave' my W.

I'm with Chaos - forgiveness has to be earned,. If my W had not been remorseful, I think I'd have trained myself not to think much about her, but I would probably still have wanted revenge.

*****

I shared the above to note a couple of ways forgiveness worked for me. Feel free to adopt or adapt them as you wish. Alas, we all have to resolve the issue as best we can.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:09 PM, Tuesday, August 26th]

Every one of these posts has good points to ponder.

I'd like to think by now I've forgiven my SAWH his cruel callous betrayals and lies that spanned from our dating years in the mid-90's through 2020, but forgiveness gets more complicated when there is no perceived shift in their other behaviors.As Cooley wrote, our brains are wired like an elephant - we never forget such trauma. But having to stay always on guard against repetitive betrayal of this magnitude takes a huge toll on the victim working towards true forgiveness of an offender's "past" behaviors...especially when you can connect the dots to all the little day-to-day, thoughtless behaviors they continue to exhibit! Makes the past live constantly "in your face."

My mind tells me if he can be this clueless about his supposedly-loved life partner in less-consequential moments, it isn't far-fetched of me to suspect he could cheat again.

I think my toughest challenge still today is to forgive, even though I will not forget, but yet not to keep re-swallowing the horrible experiences that are constantly evoked in my mind just living with a self-focused person. Yet a person who really wants to be married to me...or maybe hopes I will settle for what he can give. UGH.

Keep the good thoughts coming!

I also agree that forgiveness must be earned, and that it takes time commensurate with the offense. But I didn’t used to think that way. My parents did the whole "say you’re sorry, now say you forgive him" thing (which I sadly passed on to my children). My faith emphasizes the importance of forgiveness.

The parenting stuff is just lazy. The faith element is often taught (or maybe just understood by me) with half the story. I still love the parable of the Prodigal Son. The forgiveness is indeed radical, but it comes after a show of deep humility by the betrayer. It’s like we like to skip past that and just put all the burden on the wronged party.

I will say that still to this day I don’t really understand what people here mean that you can R without forgiving. That Venn diagram just doesn’t compute for me. I can’t see returning to a loving relationship worth being in without forgiveness (however you define that).

Superesse, if you have to deal with a difficult person every day, it’s going to grind you down into nothing unless you learn how to stop it. I believe the word no is the best answer you can give to anyone who’s trying to harm you, rob you, lie to you, cheat on you. You have agency. You have rights. Those rights are to be in your own body without fear and without agony. If the person you live with continues to do things that literally harm you emotionally, you have to make two choices. You have to go to a life coach/therapist to figure out how to deal with that person or you need to separate. You can’t live like that.
I often ask a friend of mine, a therapist, about issues here. They can only talk in generalities but one thing we discuss nonstop is dealing with narcissists. The term personality disorder is used so often that it is almost background noise. But it is the basic character/personality of a person whose whole focus is on themselves to the exclusion of others. In fact the diagnoses are not given unless the person’s behavior meets a very rigid standard. So, for example, you have someone who nearly fits the definition but not quite. To the person having to deal with them the diagnosis is no help. The damage the person does is still damage.
I have a good, not perfect, marriage. For that I am thankful.
I was not prepared for dealing with a disordered person because her behaviors were very subtle. It took me several years to even see how she impacted my day. By then we were both involved in a group activity that had slowly been "trained" to allow her almost total control on how we did our activity. It was completely unspoken but once my vision cleared I could see as long as she was allowed she would shun anyone who bucked her authority. These were all very educated women. I had been trained/educated in these type issues and still got sucked in.
We marry/cohabit with someone we have given our most vulnerable selves. If they are disordered they will see your trust as weakness and use it against you. Remember that every disordered person requires, even demands, power. They will do anything they can to wrest it away from others.

I recently watched a Spotlight (the Australian 60 Minutes) segment about a man who not only forgave, but also met up with the killer of three of his children.
The killer – a young 25 year old man with substance abuse issues – drove his vehicle into a group of seven kids, killing four (three siblings and a niece), and seriously injuring two. He got a 20 year sentence and was doing time in solitary maximum security to keep him safe from the other inmates. The parents – husband and wife – decided the VERY DAY that they would forgive the man, and have since worked at that forgiveness. The dad had the option on-site to chase him down and probably kill him before the cops came, but decided that his kids and his wife needed him more there-and-then. It’s really an extraordinary interview.
It got me really thinking about forgiveness, when it’s possible and what it’s goal or purpose might be. Didn’t give me any fixed conclusions, but has given me a lot of thought.

I strongly recommend going on Youtube and searching "facing kids killer Spotlight".

Having said that: I can state that I have fully forgiven my ex fiancé. The OM was nobody, probably didn’t know about me so I never had a need to forgive him. I didn’t forgive her early-days, but with time and maturity I sort-of realized that there wasn’t really anything to gain from carrying this anger around. Non-forgiveness is that IMHO – repressed anger.
I haven’t seen her for decades, and could just as well walk past her without recognizing. But if we were to meet it would be like meeting a former work-colleague that you recognize, but don’t really want to reconnect with.

I have previously shared on this site how a former business partner swindled on me and cost me a small fortune. For nearly 8 months after that, I would start each day outside my crappy apartment, waiting for my ride to work. I was so broke that a car was something I couldn’t afford. While waiting I would look over the bay in my city and see the roof of his big house in a great expensive neighborhood and feel the anger and resentment. My colleague who gave me a ride once asked me why I was always so grumpy in the mornings – it wasn’t exactly my character. I realized that I was allowing that guy to control me. HE was making me grumpy, at no cost whatsoever to him.
I decided to change my mentality... Instead of looking at his big house and thinking "now he’s probably going in his nice Audi to his big office and making a lot of money" I started thinking "poor man. Sold his honor and his integrity for a temporary fix. I pity him". When you pity someone that remains pitiful you start seeing them as pathetic. Pathetic cant hurt you because they are... well... pathetic.
In some ways I didn’t exactly forgive "him". But I definitely forgave myself for not catching him before he swindled on me. He became a non-issue per se.

I would hope to get at least that form of forgiveness towards infidelity. I can’t even contemplate living with a spouse that I couldn’t eventually forgive, even if one never forgets or forgives the affair itself.

Hi 1st Wife,

I forgave my fWW, I had to for my own sanity and to move forward, and at the appropriate point to consider R. I did the research on here, made posts & listened to opinions in the replies, I read the books, spoke to friends, listened to podcasts etc. My mind needs to understand the whys of human behaviour, and could I have done more or anything different other than address long term PTSD and intergenerational trauma, things I hadn't been aware of... but now all fixed.

Recently my fWW has come to the point of being deeply ashamed of her actions and has left the company, almost 3 years from DDay. I'm pleased she's arrived at this point in her journey. I was emotionally neutral when I heard her say those words and answered "perhaps you need to forgive yourself to fully heal from your poor choices and what you did to us."

She is very "WTF did I do?" and is extremely grateful that I have forgiven her and chosen R. I haven't forgiven her fAP, often wonder if I am just biding my time but have settled on karma catching him up. I need to do me and enjoy my peace, he is irrelevant.

In summary, forgiveness matters when the time is right and you have the space in your heart to do so. Holding on to it all only makes you hurt longer and we've all had enough of the anguish, pain and destruction that betrayal brings.

Be well
Salty

To forgive or not kind of goes back to some of my favorite words of wisdom I got from a member of SI about any relationship, "You tend to hit what you aim for."

If I was going to stay, it had to be because the M was going to find a way to be stronger on the other side of Hell.

So, I started the gift of R with forgiveness.

I figured since the resentments and bad communication never helped us before, we may as well give our last chance a real chance.

My forgiveness turned out to be transformational on a couple levels.

Focusing on the idea I will always hate that I was betrayed, but allow my wife to be her best self and appreciate who she is now, gave us the reset we needed to start healing the M.

Forgiveness, to me, never ever means I’m good with what happened. Again, I am comfy hating the A.

I also recognize there is no way to make up for an A either, but my wife tries anyway, with a level of care and kindness I didn’t know was possible.

So, I agree with the concept of releasing that debt that can’t be repaid.

Horrible shit happened, now how do we heal and find a way forward?

No resentments. Which takes a while to actually get to. I had a lot of anger and sadness to process before my forgiveness fully kicked in and looked like it should.

Easier said than done to keep the misery in the rear view — and somehow we pushed through.

In my case, forgiveness was a key step to get the relationship we finally both wanted, and what we continue to aim to do better and be better.

I t/j for concern over Super
The subject of this discussion is so important because people who are carrying grudges have a huge rock pile to climb to get to forgiveness. I think we could put "acceptance" in that as well. I did not cheat but my husband did. Those are the basic facts. The others are his age, his maturity, the lifestyle he was in while traveling. Put an immature person in the company of attractive people, add a little alcohol and you might have a mess. I cannot say if this is what happened. Years later I told him I knew. He did not have time to back pedal so he admitted. That was the extent of the conversation. This man has provided so well for his family that he provided safe homes, vacations and finances for college eds for me and his children, while enjoying our senses of humor. He makes us all laugh. What good would it do me to agonize over something I had no control over. He has to live with that choice because I have never mentioned it again so he might never think about it.
Actually I stay on this site to encourage bs to look at their ws with very clear eyes. If the ws is not a good person in all other aspects of their lives their bs is not going to get a good guy. If the ws fell for another but changed their mind and works toward being the person their bs needs them to be then true reconciliation might work. The one thing I hope for bs is they love and enjoy their lives. It’s the only one they get.

I used to feel a little more like hate the sin rather than the sinner. There was a time not long ago when I said I am not sure I could forgive myself or him but that I accept it and could move forward.

It took me a long time to feel compassion for myself, and as that grew my compassion grew towards him. I think today I think I can say I have forgiven both of us. Which is very big, because I have remained hardest on myself over the first seven years. I feel free of it in my day to day life. It can cross my mind, but it no longer holds an emotional charge.

I think forgiveness takes a very long period of changed behaviors and moving through many small stages and many many battles with various aspects of what transpired.

I think it’s important but not something that can be forced, nor is it something that often comes quickly. It’s not something I would focus on on the early years honestly. It’s sort of like a butterfly that eventually lands on your shoulder when enough is processed and worked through.

I do not know if he forgives me. I would never put him on the spot to have to say.I just know he still chooses to actively love me and that is more than I could ask for.

Forgiveness.....it's way over-rated. I think it's thought of like the magic wand that wipes out all the bad stuff. And there IS no magic wand that wipes out all the bad stuff. It just drives it underground where it ferments and then you have the extra layer of being injured AND having to pretend that you're the saintly person who rises above. Can that prune juice!!!!

First of all, always acknowledge and respect your own feelings, whatever they are. You don't have to act on them, especially if they're nasty or illegal - got to keep that to yourself - but always be aware of them and respect they come from part of you that has to be acknowledged - the part of you that wants to protect yourself and wants JUSTICE. Justice is the basic need of all humans - not mercy. No legal system on earth is based on mercy....if it were, we'd all live in chaos everywhere. People need justice - the sense that crime and wrong doing has been addressed and an attempt to restore balance has been done. Otherwise we will all just fester over grievances and this does break out at various points. Justice must be done though the heavens fall, that's true.

Here'a story I hate.....The Prodigal Son. We all probably know it but have we really thought about it. So a rich guy has two sons, one, probably the younger, decides he wants to go his own way and hachacha! so he asks his dad for his inheritance early. Dad is a chump and says yes, gives Junior the money, and Junior runs off to the big city and wastes everything. Wine, women, song, whatever passed for drugs then, gambling, nice clothes - you name it. So it's all gone, and Junior has to scramble. He gets poorer and poorer and is reduced to eating what amounts to hog slop. In the meantime, the other son has been working his ass off, living on the straight and narrow, getting the job done, being a good son and good man. Anyway, Junior finally thinks....well, can't get worse than this, let me go back to Dad. So he goes back to Dad with the idea of hiring himself out like a servant and eating humble pie. Which is a good plan, I think. But Dad sees him coming and makes a big fuss and starts hollering - get him some nice clothes, and a ring and good shoes and let's kill that fatted calf we were saving - we're going to have a big feast. Junior offers to be a slave basically but Dad says....NAH....you're home again, let's PARTY like it's 500 BC!!! So the older son, the good guy, gets pissed - what the hell have I been breaking my nut for and you haven't even given ME an old goat and you give this wastrel the best you have and you're so happy to see him!!! And Dad tosses out some old baloney about....he was lost and now he's found. I think he should have stayed lost, personally.

This story is unjust. I don't care who told it. The son who did the right thing should have been recognized all along for his hard work and sacrifices and right way of living. HE should get the fatted calf and ring and shoes and clothes. Junior, the wastrel....he can come home and have a pathway back BUT.....he has to EARN IT. He has to do things that show he's a changed person, who's willing to do hard work, who will be respectful, who will not waste, who maybe pays his Dad or his brother back. Something's got to change here.

That's what forgiveness is.....it should not just be handed out like a Necco wafer - it should be EARNED. Over time, with hard work and honest deeds. And maybe someone has hurt others so much they shouldn't be forgiven because forgiving them is more painful than the original crime. Then....he shouldn't be forgiven. That's part of the sentence. Balance must be restored. The world must be in harmony. You don't create harmony by denying crime and evil doing....you create it by restitution, hard work, and good intentions backed by good deeds.

So yeah, forgiveness is a bunch of bullshit and i think it actually ruins society. People need to work their way back and re-earn trust. They have to show they can change...by really changing. There IS a path back...but you have to walk over the stones.

Slightly TMI? I probably shouldn't have chimed in to this interesting discussion with my situation, since I have not handled it in the usual and recommended way of getting out from the Infidelity, either through D or R, instead I got stuck in between gears after D-Day 2 and a near-divorce, strong post nup I had made as a Divorce preparation. (FWIW I never expected to have this IHS drag on for years after signing those papers! I was kinda done, even if he wanted to hang on.)

But my point above was that I chose to give him even more time than I already had - 12 years after D-Day 1 - and the grace of forgiving what I could not understand, along with a safe space for him not to have his life up-ended by his admittedly stupid decisions, in the last-chance hope that now, he'd truly 'do the work' on his deep-seated issues that negatively affect us. That would have made forgiving his kind of thoughtless, loveless infidelity so much simpler. (No EA type A to deal with.) But I have yet to see the evidence of much change, 11 years after our "Marital Agreement" papers were signed and deeds were transferred. I wasn't expecting I'd constantly need to keep convincing my skeptical self that the kind of problems this man brought into my life have been extinguished, even when I cannot detect any difference in his treatment of me.

It is true that living with your guard up when there is someone in your house every day who has little to no ability to consider most things from another person's perspective is no way to live, even if you allow them to stay as a roommate. I could list a hundred examples but they'd each be "not that big a deal." Collectively it is a lot, and it's where I've had to separate my forgiveness of his past betrayals from these behaviors that show me all he wants or expects is to do his own thing and stay IHS forever - which I did NOT sign up for! Things that would not cost him a penny, he cannot think to do. He has to be reminded. Over and over, year after year. And thus my mind tends to go immediately to the conclusion that "This is ALL connected with the decisions he made to gratify his own self-focused, unexpressed desires."

THAT might be where I need to disconnect the association I made between thoughtless actions and deliberate betrayal, if I am ever going to be able to accept that his past is "in my past." Hope this makes any sense to anyone. Every day, I need to work on forgiving new nonsense, yet it's the same old, same old aggravting nonsense - NOT Infidelity per se. Just not SEEING me, not HEARING me, not processing any input from me, generally going about like an automaton. So I wouldn't term it a grudge, just my need to avoid similar pain and the feeling that he doesn't actually value a happy relationship with the woman he married, he just values the convenience of living in my house rent free, and the continuity of not having to admit he lost his M (even though he actually did!) And yes, he might have a spectrum disorder and be incapable of change; that thought is there as well.

But I am already having major health issues due to this decision years ago to hang in. And I was hospitalized last week for my heart condition. Who drove me there, and who wheeled me out of recovery? The same guy! My BFFs weren't offering, and my family is all deceased. So there's that. I guess my Forgiveness is just a work in progress...

Gotta tell ya, JaneBond,

I don’t pray very often, but when I do, I don’t pray for justice, I pray for mercy.