Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
By Ox Drover
For my whole life I felt that I could never measure up because I was expected to “pretend it never happened” in order to meet my mother’s definition of the word “forgive.” I was expected to trust the person who had hurt me in the past, and who I knew would hurt me again in the future. I was told by religious leaders, whom I trusted, that if I did not “pretend it didn’t happen” and “truly forgive,” I was bound for an eternal residence in hellfire and brimstone.
Many of us who are Christians know the various Bible passages that say, in essence, we must “forgive those who trespass against us” if we expect God to forgive us of our own wrongdoing. Jesus, as our ultimate example, from the cross said, “Father forgive them”¦”
How can we mortal human beings possibly expect to be able to truly forgive those people who have so deliberately ripped our lives apart?
After the “Summer of Chaos,” as I have come to call my last run in with the psychopaths, I was so devastated, so angry, so bitter, so filled with wrath that I could only focus on the many details of the many crimes and arrows that had been slung at me so very unfairly by so many members of my family. I was filled from top to bottom with bitterness and anger.
I am fortunate that I have several well-educated ministers in my acquaintance that I could call upon for advice, as well as reading the Bible for myself. After talking to these men at great length, I finally came to the question, does “forgiveness” really mean “pretending it didn’t happen, and restoring trust to these people?”
Does “love your enemies” really mean that I have to have a “gushy” feeling for these people who have harmed me so easily and with so much glee?
After much reading of the scriptures and talking with the various ministers (of several denominations) I came to a new definition of the word “forgiveness” that I think is more rational and makes more sense than my mother’s definition of “let’s just pretend none of this ever happened.” (She actually said this aloud.)
The new definitions of love and forgiveness are these.
Forgiveness does not mean “pretend it never happened.” Forgiveness means to get the bitterness and wrath out of your heart toward those that have wronged you. For example, when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, I am sure that he was very justifiably angry with these brothers for doing this to him. They demoted him from the status of “favored son” to the status of an animal that was bought and sold.
The Bible tells us, though, that Joseph got the bitterness out of his heart toward his brothers during the many years he was in Egypt. But when his brothers miraculously appeared before him, not, of course, recognizing that their brother was now second only to the Pharaoh, Joseph did not immediately identify himself to his brothers, “Hey, guys, it’s me, the brother you sold off as a slave!”
But Joseph did test his brothers to see what kind of men they had become in those same years. Were they the same uncaring, jealous men that they had been when they had cast him into the pit, and grieved their aged father with a tale about him being torn apart by some wild animal, taking his blood-stained cloak back to his father as proof of his death, not caring that they were bringing grief upon their father’s head with the tale of his death? Or had they learned anything? Had they changed?
Joseph had forgiven his brothers, but he still didn’t trust them until after they had passed his tests to see what kind of men they were.
Putting all this together then gave me a new definition of “forgiveness,” and it was simply the removing of the smoldering anger, the thirst for revenge, the gnawing hate for them. I was not required by God or good sense to trust these same people, or to “pretend they had not done what they did.” Forgiveness was an act, not a feeling.
Looking at “love your enemies” in the same way, I saw that “love” meant to do good to those that persecute you rather than take advantage to hurt them if you can. The story of the future King David fleeing from the jealous and murderous King Saul illustrates that David “loved” King Saul even though Saul was seeking to find and kill David. Twice David had a chance to kill Saul when Saul didn’t even know he was there, and both times, David did not kill Saul, but let him move on his way. Loving our enemies simply means that we must not try to seek revenge against them, even if we can, we must do what is right, even if we have a chance to do what is wrong, no matter how they have wronged us.
I came away from that summer of spiritual questioning with a new awareness of the concepts of the Bible’s teachings, which even if a person is not a believer in the Bible’s divine inspiration, still are psychologically sound.
Harboring, nurturing, and feeding anger, wrath, thoughts of revenge, may chemically light up the pleasure centers of our evolutionary brain, but in the long term, these strong and negative emotions prevent our healing. Short-term, anger is a very natural and normal part of the process we go through when we are injured. Long-term, like any other intense reactive emotion, anger/bitterness becomes a stressor in and of itself, keeping us from thinking rationally and reasonably, and focused only on the injury.
Sure, we were injured and we will never forget that injury (injuries) or the person who did them to us, but we will learn from that experience with the psychopath, learn how to prevent another “P-experience” and live a better life because of our knowledge. But trust them, ever again? Not on your life! Getting the bitterness out of our hearts, focusing on ourselves and our own healing, instead of on the hateful bitter vengeful feelings toward them, turns us in a positive direction, so that we can come to peace with the past,
What do I get out of “forgiving” those that have hurt me so much when they get off “scot-free?”
Well, first of all, I don’t get upset every time I think about them, or look at something that reminds me of them.
Secondly, I am not mad all the time. I can focus on other things besides the hurts that have been inflicted on me. In order to keep my anger up, I would have to focus a great deal of energy on thinking about the past injuries, pulling the scabs off the wounds so that they would continue to bleed. So I save a lot of energy in fueling this old anger that I can now focus on other more positive things.
Thirdly, my spirituality and my spiritual health are not impeded by this mass of anger and negative feelings. My stress level can now drop because these old injuries start to heal and the pain is lessened because of the healing. I am now more in tune with myself and my own needs, since I am no longer focusing all my energy on the injuries.
Fourthly, now that I am no longer angry all the time, I am not so prone to see insult and injury where none is intended. I have more patience with those I love and that love me. I have more patience with myself, and don’t turn this negative energy toward myself at times. I can set reasonable boundaries instead of letting things seethe and then blowing up about some minor problem that in the light of a non-angry mind isn’t worth worrying about. It lets me put things in a reasonable perspective.
Forgiving our enemies isn’t about them, it is all about US. Forgiving them allows us to heal from the wounds they inflicted. Hating and not forgiving them just allows them to go on re-injuring us forever.
@....... Oxy
This is something I’m wrestling with now. Truthfully, I am not yet at the stage where I can forgive. I would like to get there but I know I have a long hard road to travel before I can honestly say “I’ve forgiven you”.
I have two battles…my ex-P and my brother.
Ironically I find it easier to cope with the aftermath of my ex-relationship. Where my ex-P is concerned I think that the best I can do is get to a place where I can put him in perspective and forgive myself for being conned by him (you know what I mean). Hopefully I will never ever see or speak to him again and that knowledge helps. I can see myself getting to a place where I put him in the past, where he belongs.
The situation with my brother is more complicated. He is 12 years older than me and he was a father figure for most of my life. I pledged my loyalty and support to him for so many years. Not only am I distressed and hurt by how he treated me but I’m equally affected by the hurt and suffering he’s causing to so many others, most of whom are people I care about very much. Unfortunately his wife is as emotionally shallow and cruel as he is and they encourage and enable each other.
I made a decision to cut him out of my life but unfortunately that is not entirely possible. I can’t help but hear about him (and his wife) and I have no doubt I will soon get to hear the gossip about me that I’m sure they’re already spreading. As much as I would like to forgive them and move on it doesn’t seem possible right now. I am too angry and hurt. Sometimes I hate them intensely and that distresses me because I don’t want to be the kind of person who hates.
I know it will take time and I really hope I will get there because I don’t want to be eaten up by resentment and hatred.
Dear Odette,
Your brother, my son. I think when the P is a family member it makes it very difficult because other members of the family may take “sides” or the family literally becomes a “house divided.”
You talk about “having to hear about” him from others, and that makes me think you hear about him from other family members. Is that right?
There always seems to be “colateral damage” when we go NC with the family-member-P. Other family members sometimes try to “patch up” the breech in the family, well intentioned, or enabling, (whichever) still it is painful.
NC, meaning also NOT HEARING ABOUT OR DISCUSSING THE P with others, is very healing in that it allows our anger to decrease, our wrath to decrease–that’s why it is I think SO very important to NOT allow others to discuss this situation with you. To set boundaries with these people that you will NOT talk about your brother and you do NOT want information about him.
It may mean that you have to distance yourself from these situations and people at least for a while. I just at least for now stay AWAY from people who well-meaning try to get me to “forgive and forget” and “patch up” my NC relationship with my own mother.
I look at anger/Wrath sort of like a camp fire. It will die out on its own if you don’t continually feed it fuel. But everytime you pile a big load of fuel on,, it burns up brightly again. Keeping the “fuel” out of the fire by staying away from things that you KNOW in your heart will fuel it, helps me to keep my own anger quenched.
Forgiving yourself for being involved, for not acting sooner, etc. is also a big part of forgiveness, because even if we forgive them, and don’t forgive ourselves, we still haven’t accomplished much. Personally, I don’t think that we CAN forgive them if we don’t ALSO forgive ourselves for being “human.” As a life-long “over acheiver,” I was never much inclined to forgive myself for failure of any kind, for less than an A+ in anything I did. It was actually much easier for me to forgive someone else than to forgive myself. I was the “queen” of anger at myself. It is a continual struggle to me not to be angry at myself for being “human” —for having flaws, for making mistakes, for making bad judgments, etc.–but I am aware of it (first step) and sedoondly, “working on it.” I imagine for me it will be a life long struggle to “forgive myself” for not being perfect, but like they say about sobriety in AA–one day at a time.
Odette, just the fact that you “don’t want to be eaten up by resentment and hatred” as you said, makes me feel confident that you will NOT be. It is, I think those people who deliberately fuel the fires of anger, revenge, bitterness, and wrath that never let it go. I think just realizing that you don’t want to be this way “forever” is the proof that you won’t be. It may come slowly but I think it will come. Good luck.
oxy that was a good post. I am a spiritual guy, not religous. And I believe in Karma and what goes around comes around. And do on to other’s as you would want them to do you. I am not consumed with hate, hate takes alot of effort on my part. I go through anger stages, but they are less intense. I will never forget. But I am to a point where I can say and feel “whew glad that’s over!”
Right on!
My own personal understanding of the definition of “to forgive” is basically ….
To have acceptance of what someone did, and be cool with it.
And by that I do NOT mean the following:
condone the act
put myself in the position to accept more of the same in future
put myself in the position to accept more of similar from the same person
be generally cool & lackadaisical about people doing the same in general
have a warm enthusiastic positive feeling about what happened
have a warm affection for the person who did it
None of that. That’s not what forgiveness is about to me.
And that’s why I don’t like the whole “forgive & forget” put together. Forgive & forget are NOT chocolate & peanut butter!!
In fact, I would say that if you’ve forgotten, you haven’t really forgiven! Because you’re either in denial, or there was nothing to forgive in the first place!
What I do mean is that I accept that it occurred (or was done to me) without any rose-coloured glasses, rationalizations or explanations or “denial”, & without blaming myself or god or whatnot.
I accept it AS IS.
And that I FEEL okay about it now.
Not that I feel it WAS OKAY. Not that I feel fantastic about it But that I just feel OKAY about it NOW. IE: I’m not holding a grudge, seeking revenge, having it eat away at me, etc.
Bottom line is – FORGIVENESS is for the FORGIVER, NOT the forgiven.
Any major religion I’ve ever learned about seems to agree with me on this too.
Because where the perpetrator is involved – you’re NOT god, so you’re not in any position to grant absolution or whatnot, that type of forgiveness. That’s between them and god.
Sociopaths (and other garden variety a-holes), of course, believe forgiveness is for the forgiven – ie: THEM… and that it means they’re free to do it over again without you retaliating, reminding them, or setting any kind of limits on the behaviour. And they’ll try to convince you of this, for their own purposes, of course!
And I think forgiving takes time, and a lot of personal care. Meditation or prayer or just focusing on something positive. Forgiving is not something you can just decide to do one day like turning on a light switch. And so it’s certainly not something one person can demand from another!
OxDrover:
Your comment about secondary or tertiary NC is a very good point.
It’s one thing if I talk about Person X to someone who doesn’t know Person X from adam or has nothing to do with Person X at all… but talking about Person X with someone else who deals with Person X, especially regularly is pretty much like contact.
NC means “no news” either. And no contact using someone else as a bridge.
The toxic poison has a way of traveling on those bridges whether the person meant to be a poison delivery system or not.
Dear WP. Well written. We had a discussion on forgiveness recently, but you pitched it just right.
When I was with the N, he regularly used intermediate acquaintances to convey information and do his dirty work. In fact those people made the situation worse, because they fed into it and added their own ‘assumptions’, which sent me spinning. I must say that I encouraged the situation, because I spoke to his ex and other people got drawn in. Never again.
Dear WP,
I agree whole heartedly with your post (above) and your comment about the “bridges” and the toxin traveling over them to us. Yep, it sure does!
You and I are in total agreement about the concepts of “forgiveness” though we phrased it a bit differently.
The problem for ME was that I had been FORCE FED the “let’s pretend it didn’t happen” and that was of course for the benefit of the OFFENDER. LOL It actually took having my mother say ALOUD “let’s just pretend none of this happened.” Like WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, HOW BADLY I WAS HURT, DIDN’T MATTER AT ALL.
And, TO HER IT DIDN’T MATTER, but to ME it MATTERED A GREAT DEAL. I could no longer trust her, and I knew it, but she wanted me to PRETEND that I wasn’t hurt and just let it slide. It was then I flashed on the fact that her definition of “forgiveness” meant the PRETENSE that my pain never mattered.
Well, if your pain doesn’t matter to me—do I love you? Of course not, because YOUR pain is MY pain if I love you. I cannot possibly love you if I have NO EMPATHY FOR YOUR PAIN.
Of course, realizing that you don’t love me is painful for me, but at the same time, I cannot change that.
If I continue to dwell on and be sngry forever, though, it adversely impacts my own healing.
You are right, every religion or philosophy in the world preaches the same concept, not just Christianity. I have read it in the writings of many religions, not just in the Bible, but I just used the Bible examples to make my point as I am more familiar with them. I think the concepts are UNIVERSALLY applicable to continued bitterness in our own souls for our losses, regardless of what philosophy, psychology, spirituality, or religion you espouse or even no religion.
Forgiveness is NOT about THEM, but about our own healing from the wounds inflicted upon us, and a sense of anger at injustice is one of those “inhuries” but never condoning what they did or allowing them or anyone else to repeat those injuries either.
In the book “Emotional Intelligence” the author stresses that people who are angry about anything, tend to be more prone to being irritated and made more angry at anything that happens to them during that time, so anger breeds more anger. By decreasing our anger, we decrease our potenitial to keep being “hair triggered” by other things. We can be much more at peace with the entire world and everyone in it.
Because I have mutual financial interests I must deal with my mother once in a while, but I do it from as much “arms length” as possible, either by e mail, SHORT (only seconds) phone conversations or if a face to face is necessary I do it via one of my sons, to keep down re-injury to an absolute minimum.
Dear Oxy, your mother was encouraging you to sweep the situation under the carpet – but alot of that kind of parenting was in the days when children were seen and not heard. We have since learnt, that we need to be HEARD and that if we are not heard, then, the sore has a way of making itself heard. People process their feelings and anger in different ways and the anger needs time to burn itself and be heard.
When I first realised who he was, the rage I felt made me think up things I could do to get him back, and I still think about it from time to time. But I want him to receive every speck of the karma due to him, I will let the cosmos take the appropriate action.
Dear Oxy, A good headline article from you. Forgiveness is a balancing act and needs working at to gain the right perspective, not only from the point of view of what was done to us, but also respecting and feeling our own feelings, however and whenever they manifest.
one more thot on forgiveness. We can’t forgive the scorpion for stinging us, we just stay out of there way so they won’t do it again. And forgiving MYSELF for giving the scorpion a ride is something I am still working on…
Dear Henry,
I thinkk really, that untiil I got to the point that I could forgive THEM, I had difficulty forgiving MYSELF. That may not make any sense, but some how for me it works.
I CAN forgive the scorpion for stinng me, because THAT’S WHAT SORPIONS DO. I knew that, and still I kept myself in proximity to allow them to sting me. So until I forgave them for doing what scorpions do–sting–I couldn’t forgive myself.
Believe me, I BEAT MYSELF UP REALLY BAD for being so”stupid”–but if you substitute the word HUMAN FOR STUPID, it is much easier to forgive yourself for being HUMAN than it is to forgive yourself for being STUPID. If THAT makes any sense either! LOL
Thank you, Bev, I totally agree that we need to let karma, God, the Universe, or whatever you visualize the “force” as being, bring them down, because WHATEVER IT IS, IT WORKS. “As you sow, so shall ye reap”—if we sow seeds of EVIL we will reap an EVIL crop eventually, in one way or another.
That’s why I don’t want to “sow” anger and hostility and the desire for revenge, because I think it makes my own “crop” bad. I would rather sow seeds of goodness and kindness and self protection than vengence. The Universe will take care of the rest. Peace