The challenge of forgiveness
Let me set up a hypothetical situation for you.
Someone does something really crappy to you. It doesn’t involve torture, bloodshed, or imminent danger to life or limb — but it’s not a minor annoyance, either. Think cheating, stealing, lying to or about you, that kind of thing. To make matters worse, it’s done by someone you thought you had every reason to trust. And when you say, “Hey, what the hell,” this person you trusted plays the “you made me do it” card.
What do you do? Unless you’re a saint, you get mad, and you probably stay that way for a good long while. But then what?
To some extent, this is a universal experience. It’s probably not hypothetical to you. It’s not hypothetical to me.
To add insult to injury, someone who took advantage of my trust has noticed that I made the best of the betrayal, and now points to that as proof that it wasn’t actually that bad and, in fact, might even be considered as having done me a favor.
What do I do? I’m not a saint. I got mad. I’ve stayed that way for a good long while. But now what?
Because the thing is, I’m starting to realize that my anger is no longer serving me. Oh, it did at first. It gave me the strength to stand up for myself, to put an end to the bad behavior, and to say, “Do not do that again, or else.” But now my anger is becoming counterproductive.
It doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t undo the past. It doesn’t even elicit an apology; if anything, the other person has used it as an excuse to justify a lack of regret. Worse yet, rage keeps me perpetually frozen in the painful and infuriating moment that I discovered someone I trusted was entirely untrustworthy. As long as I continue feeling it, I continue defining myself as a victim — and more than that, I continue berating myself for not having known, somehow, that I needed to protect myself. That’s corrosive, even more damaging to me in the long run than the original betrayal.
And so I find myself wrestling with the terrifying concept of forgiveness. Yes, terrifying. I know continuing to be good and mad (understandable though it might be) is, as the saying goes, “drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” But my fear is that without it, I have no way to protect myself against a repeat performance.
That’s why I wish I could erase the phrase “forgive and forget” from the language. I think it does us all a huge disservice; it implies that forgiveness equals defenselessness. Forgiving bad behavior — or to phrase it in a way I’m more comfortable with, letting go of anger about it — doesn’t mean accepting it. As a wise friend recently said to me, “You can forgive a scared dog for biting you, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it bite you again.”
If I let go of my anger, am I excusing being treated poorly, or worse yet, agreeing that it was appropriate? Does forgiveness mean I have to pretend it never happened? Does it obligate me to give the other person the chance to hurt me again in exactly the same way?
No. No. And no.
Once you move an untrustworthy person to the periphery of your life, where he can’t do you any further damage, you no longer need the weapon of anger to protect you. Letting go of it is about switching perspective from “things to run away from” to “things to run toward.”
I don’t know precisely how to do that. But I know it’s necessary. And I know it’s possible.
What are your thoughts on forgiveness?
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i did a story not long ago that touched on how researchers who study forgiveness define forgiveness (from a psychological POV) as opposed to how the rest of us do (from a moral, theological, legal and philosophical POV). there’s tons of literature on how harboring resentments and grudges takes a huge toll on our physical and psychological health. we don’t have to forget, but when we LET GO, we are doing ourselves, NOT the douche-y person who wronged us, a favor. i do like the quote attributed to Buddha: : “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”
I’ve got two thoughts: one is that rage does not necessarily freeze you in the position of voctim, or the moment when the betrayal first hit — but it’s worth thinking about and analyzing. In some cases, I’ve found that the anger is more because I’m in a recurring pattern, and I need to figure out how I got there and how to get out.
And somewhere in the past few years, I read a post about forgiveness that made the analogy of thinking of it as a bad debt. You don’t expect to be repaid, but you are no longer considering the cause of your anger as something that can affect you; on the other hand, you’re not forgetting the situation or the effect, and you will (probably) not invest in the same (or a similar) situation again. I found that a useful metaphor, and have applied it to aspects of my life. (Not completely successfully all the time, but it’s definitely worked for me part of the time.)
I would really like to see that story! Pointer, please?
Velma, great analogy. And Fawn, sorry — the piece was for Self and isn’t online! I’ll email the final copy to you.
I am a non-forgiver. But I don’t hold resentment in, either. If someone well and truly effs me over, they are cut out of my life, simply and swiftly. I’ll be cordial in social situations, sure, but they are never allowed into my circle ever again. That’s it. They’re done.
My figuring is this: I do not have unlimited energy, and I want to give that to people who love and care about their friends. Those that treat people with no respect just aren’t worth my time.
For me, often times the forgiveness really isn’t about the offender. It’s allowing myself to move past the anger, disgust, disappointment, fear, etc. that I felt by the betrayal.
My 2 cents worth.
Right — and what I find myself struggling with is the fear that moving past those emotions leaves me vulnerable to letting it happen again. But I suspect that once the storm of emotions has passed, all I’m left with is…indifference. And what you don’t care about can’t really hurt you.
I’ve always had more success in focusing on forgiving myself for being duped, rather than trying to forgive the other person. I’m with Lynn — I don’t have the time or energy for liars and cheats in my life, so they get the axe straightaway. But I do have to live with my own mistakes, so I first work to forgive myself, never forget that I was wronged (though I try not to dwell on it either), and cease to care about the other person.
I agree that “forgive and forget” is not a useful phrase. I’ve learned that forgiveness does NOT mean that what the offending party did was okay; it just means that the offense doesn’t have control over my life and happiness anymore.
There’s a beautiful film that I think you’d appreciate called Forgiving Dr. Mengele. It’s a documentary about Eva Mozes Kor (a Holocaust survivor who was experimented on by Mengele along with her twin sister and lost much of her family in the camps), and her decision to forgive the Nazis.
Her private decision, which she stated publicly, created an uproar. One of the most memorable images from the film for me was the contrast between the unforgiving survivors, stuck in anger and misery, and Eva Kor, who has allowed happiness back into her life.
THAT’s the power of forgiveness.
And yes, indifference is always my goal when I’ve been hurt by someone. I look forward to being in a place where I just don’t care one way or the other!
This is an interesting one for me.
I have a very good friend with whom I’m rather angry at the moment. And since this person has done nothing to make up for being rather unpleasant to me, I’ve had to decide that since I don’t want to write her off altogether, I’d best make the first move in starting a discussion about all this. So I have. It remains to be seen whether subsequent discussions will yield the concessions/apologies from her I (of course) think I deserve.
I actually have a terrible memory for grudges. Once I decide to move on, I usually completely forget the original incident. Is this a bad thing?
On a social level, forgetting is deadly. I speak of mass crimes against human rights. But remembering is not enough – it does not automatically translate into moral courage.
I think often in these matters we measure up reality against some platonic ideal of justice, and of course, reality always will almost always fall short, and so we will always be disappointed.
Lynn’s approach troubles me a little because it seems to assume that we have perfect understanding of the motives and assumptions of those we feel have chosen to wound us. But perhaps I’m too optimistic about human nature, believing that very few people are deliberately nasty.