Questions about forgiveness

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been asked to forgive someone who did something bad to me. On the grand spectrum of evil, this is a fairly minor infraction, but it was bad enough for my life to have been topsy-turvey for the past few weeks, as I’ve been thinking about the future and how I’m going to deal with this person.

I’ve never really been in a situation where I’ve had to consciously forgive someone. I’m lucky in this regard…lucky because I’ve avoided sticky situations and lucky because I’ve been blessed with a laid back, live-and-let-live attitutude. But now that I have to face this situation, I feel ill-equipped. One part of me wants to just shrug and pretend nothing happened. Things would be easier this way, and I would come out looking like a saint. But a lot of me wants to just write this person off and move on with my life. I don’t like the feelings this situation has brought out in me. I don’t want to risk it happening again.

The person who hurt me has apologized, admitted total wrong-doing, and promises to never do it again. And he wants us to go back to the way things were. Just because it seemed like the right thing to do, I told him I forgive him. But now I’m not so sure. I don’t really know what forgiveness means, I realize. Does it mean not feeling angry any more? Well, I still feel angry at him, as well as wary. I’m not sure I can go back to the way things were. Does it mean putting the situation out of my mind? That hasn’t happened yet and I can’t see it happening any time soon.

Maybe by asking questions to you wise, wise people, I can clear up my confusion:

  1. What does forgiveness mean to you?

  2. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?

  3. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven?

  4. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?

2
  1. Is she hot?
3

These are actually quite hard questions to answer!

  1. What does forgiveness mean to you?

To me, it means moving on rather than dwelling on the ‘offense’ and it implies an understanding that the person who committed the offense is genuinely sorry for what they did.

  1. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?

I’d say the emotional abuse I recieved from my mother as a fat kid. She recently apologised for some of the things her and my dad used to do to me, and I forgave her. I forgave her because I felt she was genuinely sorry for what she did, and because I felt she did not realise at the time how much damage she was doing to me.

  1. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?

Forgiveness (to me) means mending bridges - accepting what happened but not continuing to punish the person for what they did. There is no ‘normal’ in relationships, they are constantly changing everytime you interact with someone. to act as if nothing happened is simply a pretence and isn’t forgiveness to me - forgiveness implies accepting what has happened but choosing to rebuild the relationship.

Hope that helps in some way, I don’t know that I’ve really articulated myself particularly well!

4
  1. What does forgiveness mean to you?

Forgiving means . . . well, it means accepting the other person and moving on even if you remember the past. I didn’t state that very well, but forgiveness operates on several hard-to-articulate levels

  1. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?

I forgave the townies who made my life hell in a certain small-town high school. There didn’t seem to be much of a point to holding a grudge.

  1. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven?

I’ve never forgiven my dad for emotionally abusing my mom and hitting my little sisters before I was big enough and strong enough to stop him.

  1. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened?

I hope not, because completely forgetting is impossible. The best you can hope for is acceptance and moving on in a relationship with the knowledge that it has changed.

BTW, the person asking for forgiveness wouldn’t happen to be that weird guy from the lab you were posting about, would he? Because I would think twice before I took anything he said at face value. That dude sounded unstable.

5

Yeah, it’s him. And you’ve articulated why I’m having a hard time figuring out what to do.

6

How about asking him what he means by forgiveness. Cos it might have a completely different meaning for him, i.e. he might think that you forgiving him means that he has a chance with you (if I’m thinking of the right person/situation).

7

Or maybe a nice compromise might be to ask him “Are you sorry for what happened” and when he says “Yes”, say “Thank you, I accept your apology.”

Might be sufficient to make him happy, yet not to the degree of forgiveness!

8

I’m not sure I ever forgive anything. There are offenses I choose to ignore.

I’m sure that I have forgotten things, and and at times have gotten pissed off all over again when something reminds me of an offense.

9

Yep, I was also suprised by how difficult these were to get a handle on!

  1. What does forgiveness mean to you?
    A lot depends on the person and the relationship history, and the incident at hand. On my part, forgiving someone means that I am accepting their apology as sincere, and that I will make an honest effort to move forward. Depending on the actual problem, it might have some … impact, I guess, I don’t quite want to say consequences … on future behaviors. I had a friend who is a little overly competitive and there was An Incident involving some very rude behavior at my home – this person was quite shockingly rude toward other guests over a BOARD GAME, if you can believe it. She did apologize and I forgave, but I did say that perhaps it would be better for our friendship if future get-togethers with this person did not involve games. It wasn’t meant to be punishment, but more like a practical way to approach our friendship going forward.

  2. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?
    A very good friend had an affair with my boyfriend-- I forgave her and not him. Boyfriend and I were living together at the time, eventually we broke up for mostly other reasons. Gah. The woman and I are still friends.

  3. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven?
    I tend to forgive and forget (not related to each other – I forgive, and then I forget because I’m an airhead, not because I’m a saintly person) but the one that stands out was a teacher of mine from high school who … hmmm, I’m trying to make this brief without being coy … got into an inappropriate situation involving students (that sounds like sexual abuse or something, but it wasn’t anything that awful) and then turned around and blamed us (the students) and I was 15 so I believed him and felt guilty for years!

  4. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?
    I think I kind of answered that in bits of the above questions. I think sometimes even with sincere forgiveness, things can be different. I think it makes sense to be forthcoming about what you expect will be different – like my friend who can’t handle playing Trivial Pursuit in public.

10
  1. What does forgiveness mean to you?

It just gets you over harbouring resentment - it’s really more to put your own mind at ease than for the benefit of the other person.

  1. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?
    Murder.

  2. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven?
    Rape

  3. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?

Definitly NOT. Forgive, but do not forget - we don’t want to repeat this over and over.

11

Those are some tough questions. To me, forgiving is definitely not the same as forgetting. Who among us can truly forget the really bad things that happen to us. And really, forgiveness is bigger and harder than forgetting, because you have to go on having some sort of relationship with the person you’ve forgiven, being fully aware of what they’ve done. If you could just forget it would be poof like nothing ever happened.

The worse thing I ever had to forgive was when, on my birthday, my mother told me she was remarrying less than 5 months after my father had died. They’d been married for 46 years. The worse part was when she said “Dogs won’t cut it as companions for me, like they do you”. Thanks for sticking a knife into my back. Do you think I was happy being 38 years old and single? It was very hard for me to get past. I went to confession and discussed it with a priest who told me that parent/child relationships were ever-changing. As long as I didn’t actively wish her ill, and could be civil, that was enough for now. It took a long time, but we have a decent relationship again. But she’ll never be able to hurt me like that because I’ll never let her opinions or words have that much sway over my life. I’ve told her, “If you don’t like the way I live my life, tough. I’m not dependant on you, and you have no right to try to dictate anything to me anymore.” It was actually a very positive step.

You don’t owe anyone forgiveness, but in the case of this guy, you need to be able to have a halfway decent working relationship with him. I’d tell him that you accept his apology, but would prefer not to go any farther than that.

StG

12

I don’t think forgiving someone means you have to forget what they did and go back to the way things were before. Some things are forgettable, especially with time, but there are some things you shouldn’t forget. I know your situation isn’t this extreme, but just for an example, if someone abuses you, you might at some point be able to forgive them, but I don’t think anyone should forget and go back into that situation. If this person is manipulative or abusive or mistreats people in other ways, that’s something you shouldn’t forget. Some people are bad, and forgiving them doesn’t mean that you should pretend their badness just doesn’t exist, because then you have to go through this all over again.

I’ve forgiven one person for some really bad things (I don’t want to go into details, but in a nutshell, I had a miserable childhood because of him), but I have no desire to have a relationship with him ever again. I don’t want him around my family, because I know he’s still a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad person, and he’ll take advantage of people if he has the chance. I wouldn’t want to put myself or my family in that situation. Should you let someone stay in your house who’s probably going to steal from you? I don’t think so.

Forgiveness isn’t something you can do on command–you can only really do it when you’re ready. If you’re still angry, you’re probably not ready. I think forgiveness is really being at peace inside yourself, and not feeling anger and resentment, even though you still remember what happened. For me, it’s realizing that bad things happened, but they’ve made me a better person.

On the flip side, I’ve had some friends do things that I thought would end the friendship, but I got over it. Things like not responding to calls and emails (once in a while is okay, but several times in a row, and I start to feel unloved). But they’re generally good people, and I value their friendship, and I know they have good reasons for doing it, so in that case I did forgive and forget. For me, the amount of forgiveness depends on how much I like the person–I’d forgive my best friends for things that I’d still resent for a while if other people did the same thing.

13

Forgiveness is not always an instant decision. Sometimes it’s a long process–it can take a lot of time and effort to truly forgive a deep offense, but the important thing is that you commit to it. Forgiveness is not only good for the offender, it’s healing for the victim of the offense. I know that when I finally let go of certain pains of the past, I felt free for the first time in a long time.

As far as forgetting goes–well, we’re only human. We can’t ever really erase a memory, but we can put it from our minds as much as possible, and refuse to dwell endlessly on the offense. And also, it means never using the offense as a weapon. You don’t store it up in some kind of arsenal to be brought up the next time there’s a disagreement with that person.

And forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that you trust again. You could forgive someone who constantly lies, but still understand that that person is indeed a liar and not give credence to what he says. You simply aren’t nursing a grudge, that’s all.

14

It’d be big of you to forgive him, but if he seriously screwed things up you’re under no obligation.

I’ve had major girl problems caused in my life by four people so far (we won’t count the actual girls I had problems regarding): in geographical order, one girl who “stole” mine (1); a guy who took advantage of another girl while I was out of state for college and our relationship (the girl and I) was on the rocks, treated her like shit and has generally been an all-around misogynist and asshole (2); a woman who befriended me on a false premise to hook me up with her friend, who (according to the plan) herself would pretend to spontaneously fall in love with me so that she could get me to marry her and thusly give her citizenship (3, again not counting the GF who wanted the green card); and a guy who secretly dated number 3 and used that to set up all kinds of drama in my life (we won’t even get into that part), and then got the GF’s number somehow while she and I were dating and hit on her (4).

I’ll just run through them to give you four different perspectives on it. Note: Now that I’ve written some of the stuff below, I gotta warn ya, it’s gonna be really long.

  1. This was the most morally ambiguous one. I’d inadvertently broken off my relatinship with the girl who was “stolen” from me, by saying something to her that I now realize was a pretty shitty thing to say and basically meant we were over. Again, I had no idea that’s what my words meant at the time; it’s ridiculously obvious now, but I was naive, much more so than her even though I’m three years older than her. By the time I realized what had happened and that our thing was over, I was in another state (for college orientation) and my best friend (female) had started dating her exclusively. When I came back to San Diego I raised hell about it, and my former best friend was telling me that she didn’t realize I hadn’t meant to dump the other girl and that she would end their relationship if I asked her to; while the girl at the center of this maelstrom basically told me all the gruesome, violent things she’d do to me if I told the former friend to dump her. I seriously considered saying the word–I was pissed and really badly hurt, plus I knew that my ‘friend’ would destroy her; I’d watched her do awful, awful things (emotionally) to boyfriends and girlfriends before. But I decided not to press the red button, as I realized that that would just make everything worse all around.

That was tough as hell, man. I really miss that girl. She was my first kiss and even though we never dated or had sex she was by far the best I’ve ever had, just because I learned so much from her. She was three years younger than me, like I’ve said, but made up for it in spades with maturity. I was at her house recently with the girl who “stole” her from me (they’ve been broken up for a while now) and a couple of other people from my HS, and it was strained between the two of us. Total fuckin’ bummer. My ‘relationship’ with her, for whatever it was, was probably more rewarding than any relationship I’ve had with anyone else since. I deserve it for saying what I said back then and then for being a bitter asshole once they started dating. But man, it sucks. But I digress.

Even though there was enough wrongdoing on my part, I felt that I was really betrayed by my former best friend. After a little while I went off to college, then that fell through (sigh…whole nother thread…fuck) and I came back to San Diego and saw them a few more times, and then didn’t see either of them much for a long time. A little over two years after the initial fiasco, I’ve just started to hang out with them and talk to my former friend a little bit, and I’ve decided that I’m going to hang out with both; try to mend things with the girl in the middle, because I think she’s one of the truest friends I’ve ever had, and I want to be her friend again; and I’ll gradually let my former friend back into my life but it’ll be a pretty good while (if ever) before I trust her, do her favors, etc. again. I honestly want to be friends with her again, too. She’s more receptive to this than the girl in the middle of the situation. She and I were really tight in high school and we’ve always been able to understand each other and trust each other, so I’m willing to give it another try.

So, in short, there’s one of your options: wait a while (maybe not two years, or maybe so), then let your friend back into your life gradually but make him earn the trust he used to have and really bend over backwards to become close to you again. If he never feels the need, hang out with him socially but keep it at that level. Just one option.

  1. I don’t think I can ever forgive this guy, only because I keep hearing more and more about his conquests and his misogynistic bullshit and I really can’t respect him anymore. I think I’d have trouble hanging out with him without thinking about what an asshole he’s been to so many people, women and their boyfriends especially. It’s not that I feel like he’s done me any great harm; my problems with the girl of mine he schtupped are my own, and ones I’ve caused, and he was just taking advantage of an opportunity when it landed on him…it’s just that I used to ignore his misogyny because I figured it didn’t affect me and his other guy friends, but now I’ve seen what little regard he has for committed relationships (now that he’s been left bitter by his own dating woes) and I just can’t see how I could hang out with him and ignore it anymore. Seriously, he’s put his sausage in just about every girl he knows, and instead of making him (or them) happy, it fucks up their friendship and his friendship with guys who have any kind of mutual interest with the girl. I don’t think I’ll forgive this guy. I’m gradually reintroducing myself into the ol’ high school social circle where the people I mentioned above are, and he still hangs out with those folk, so I’ll probably run into him a couple of times in the future and I’ll be cordial but I don’t think we can ever be as close as we were before (staying over at each others’ houses all the time, confiding in each other, swapping advice for all of our problems, hanging out with each other by default when we weren’t doing other things—we were really close).

So that’s another option: be social with him and maybe reminisce a little if you have to, but keep him out of your inner circle.

  1. Fuck. There are no words. This woman turned my whole world upside down for months. I will never speak to her again, beyond whatever I need to say to get her to leave or to escape the situation myself when I run into her at school. She’s run into me once at school already and tried to get back into the circle, and I made up bullshit about my phone not working so I didn’t call her etc. I’m pretty sure she got the message. If not, I’ll just keep having somewhere I have to go urgently whenever I run into her.

  2. In a way, I’m almost grateful to him for inadvertently opening my eyes to all the fucked up problems in that relationship. Plus, he warned me that it was a green card grab going in, and I didn’t listen. But he’s a displaced hick from Redneckville, Pacific Northwest, who doesn’t shower or change clothes, believes all the backwards shit his dad told him about how the world works, and exists for nothing more than getting drunk and fucking women he’ll then pretend don’t exist. There are two reasons this matters to me: (1) we can’t have a conversation without the topic inevitably changing back to drunken-sex bragging several times, and that’s just fucking boring, especially because he doesn’t remember the details, and (2) someone who values nothing (including friendship) more than he values a wet hole to put his penis for the night, is obviously not going to do the right thing WRT his friends who care for him, as he’s demonstrated first-hand already. No thanks. Don’t need him in my life. I’ve thought about exacting revenge, but then I realized he doesn’t matter, and exact better revenge on himself than I ever could on him, to the tune of cirrhosis, kidney failure, amnesia, etc.

So, from 3 and 4, that’s another option: Cut the fucker out of your life forever.

Which one is appropriate? The first? The second? The third? None of them? That’s your call. IMO it can’t hurt to keep things at a social level for a while (few months maybe) and then see how you feel about things. The difference between “sorry I hurt you” and “sorry I got called on it” becomes more clear with time.

You’ve seen a long read of all the offenses done on me recently that really matter (well, by peers anyway) already, so I’ll just answer OP questions 1 and 4:

  1. Forgiveness can mean any of a large number of things; it’s a spectrum. Unfortunately, I can’t picture anything ever being truly the same as before when something happens which makes me wonder whether or how I should forgive the person. Hopefully, we can still be friends after a long healing period and things can maybe go back to something resembling normalcy. But usually forgiveness means acknowledging that the other person deserves a second chance, without giving them exactly the same key combination you gave them before. Reader’s digest version: Forgiveness means letting them earn back your trust but never letting them screw you over again.

  2. No; if you have to spend this much time pondering the forgiveness, you’ll never forget the offense, at least not in less than a couple decades, I would think. Forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting and, except in exceptional cases, shouldn’t involve forgetting IMO. Interactions will always be different, and you can do this while still forgiving the offense. See #1.

Can we have some background, like a link to the thread?

15

  1. Forgiveness isn’t about them. It’s about you. I forgive so that I don’t have to carry all the anger and bitterness around with me. It is not for their benefit, it is for mine, so that I don’t end up a bitter, miserable person. As the saying goes, the best revenge is to live well, but it is hard to live well if you are eaten up with a desire for revenge.

  2. I’d prefer not to say, but it’s up there on the list of stuff you really don’t want to happen to you.

  3. I’ve never really let go the fact that someone I thought was a friend took one of my favourite CDs and denied taking it, even when confronted. I know, petty, awful of me, but there you go.

  4. Pretending things didn’t happen is not the same thing as forgiveness. Forgiveness is about saying “this happened, I was hurt, but I’m going to work through this and not let that hurt eat me up. I’m going to learn from this experience so that I can avoid being hurt like this again”.

You can forgive someone while still cutting them out from your life- it is the reasoning behind your actions that changes, not the actions themselves. So, you cut them out of your life, not because you want to hurt or punish them, but because you can see no benefit to yourself or them by maintaining the relationship.

Or you keep a relationship strictly professional and courteous, not because you want them to suffer by denying them friendship, but because that distance is the only way you can be around them and stay civil, and you recognise that in their dealings with you, others deserve civility as a bare minimum.

Forgiveness does, in one sense mean letting go- when you forgive someone, although you will never forget the hurt they caused you, you don’t get to use their misdeed as emotional blackmail. Everytime you don’t get your way, you cannot drag up their wrongdoing and expect them to cave in to your wishes out of guilt.

You have to let go of the hurt as a bargaining chip, or a tool for manipulation, you don’t let it go as a learning experience or as something that has happened to you.

And I’m sorry if this comes off as a load of touchy-feely bulllcrap.

16

In the case of the guy that all this is about, monstro, I’m not sure forgiveness really applies.

How can you forgive someone for being insane? Because that’s what he is asking you to do. He realizes that he did wrong and he has apologized for leaving you that note, which is good, but he’s living in a fantasy world if he thinks things can go back to the way they were. This isn’t a case of someone just being thoughtless or rude. His problems go deeper than that, and it is those problems that are the source of your current conflict. Not the note that he left. That’s merely symptom.

To answer your question, I’m like you. No one has ever done me wrong to such an extent that I really had to ponder about forgiveness. I mean, there have been some minor little things, but nothing like abuse or betrayal.

17

1. What does forgiveness mean to you?

Sanity, really, and the ability to go on with my own life.

2. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?

After I’d moved out of my parents’ house I was trying to get a job. My aunts showed up at the group interview with my mom and tried to sabatoge it. My aunt grabbed my arm so hard it left bruises all up and down the skin. Of course I forgave them, they only meant for the best and didn’t know the right way to do it, and I was a headstrong young girl.

3. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven? My mother calling me a whore. I’ve forgiven her for everything else, I had to, to be able to live my own life. But that word - kanjari - I’ll never forget it, and it still stings to this day.

4. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?

Sometimes. I will never forget my mother’s behavior, because she hasn’t changed a bit. My aunts on the other hand, I will try to forget, because they have changed and understand me better.

From your OP:

You can forgive him, and still cut him out of your life, and if this is how you feel, you damn well should.

18

1. What does forgiveness mean to you?
Forgiveness means I let myself stop dwelling on it. It means I give myself permission to think about other things when that person’s name is mentioned. It means I allow myself to follow our relationship (whatever type or relationship that may be, from romantic to never-see-them-again) into the future, instead of being overwhelmed and stuck in the past. Notice all the "I"s in there - it has very little to do with the other person, other than I may let them know I’m forgiving them. It’s an internal process. And I think it’s a process, not an event.

2. What was the worse offense that you’ve completely forgiven?
My brother for raping me repeatedly as a child. My family for doing nothing about it.

3. What was the lowliest offense that you’ve never completely forgiven?
My mother calling me “thunder thighs” as a kid and teenager.

4. Does forgiveness require forgetting? Does it mean returning relationships back to normal, as if nothing happened? Or can interactions be different, yet offenses still forgiven?
No, no and yes. There is no way to “go back to the way things were” we can “go forward and hope things improve”, or “go on and make a better relationship”, but until time travel is invented, we literally cannot go back. The relationship may be different, or it may flow and become very like the old relationship, but that history will always be there.

And, while you didn’t ask for advice, I also caution you to be very, very careful. You can forgive (and pledge to go forward in the relationship and not dwell on his former actions), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on guard for his *future *actions.

19

Seems to me that you’re wasting a lot of your time thinking about this person. By agonizing over whether to grant them forgiveness, you’re just allowing their drama to (continue to) infect your life. Don’t give them the satisfaction. You’ll probably be on cold terms with this person for at least the near future if you still feel angry, but that’s just the way it is. It may thaw with time, or it may not. Either way, it’s their problem, not yours.

20

Gotta agree with this, and add something which may sound obvious, but which all too many people forget:

This guy’s problem has nothing to do with you. Nothing. I can’t see how it would matter whether you forgive him or not. It isn’t going to make a difference in the long run, because your feelings about him one way or another just don’t factor into the basic equation of what makes him tick.

Just be careful, monstro. As a squad leader of mine once said back in the day, “Never turn your back on the insanity.”