The difference between forgivable and unforgivable actions

[Widdiful Falling]

My lovely, amazing SO told me, yesterday, that his parents used to beat him. This triggered a rage in me so huge I thought the air around me might light on fire from the friction in my thoughts. I told him that I hated his parents for that, and would like to set them on fire. He said he didn't, because, even though they had beaten him, it was because of an ageist bias that they have since gotten over. I have seen with my own eyes that they treat my SO with respect as an adult child, and he said that, after they made their mistakes with him, they learned from them, and didn't repeat them with any of their other children.

While I don't advocate for corporal punishment in any situation, I find myself agreeing that these people are forgivable, as they are now; that they made a mistake, and did their best to rectify it. How different this is from my own experience, where mistakes were not something my M could learn from, but something to cover up, and hide.

I find myself unable to forgive the people my MIL and FIL were, in the past. However, I think that besides his emotional resilience, there are some key differences between our experiences that contributed to SO growing up relatively undamaged.

For my SO, being beaten was a punishment for an external event. In my life, being beaten was a punishment for my mother's internal anger. The physical abuse my SO experienced was just that: physical. It came without the systematic psychological torture that pervaded every facet of my home life. He did not grow up with the idea that he was bad, or wrong thrown at his head at every turn. Beyond all that, his parents validated his feelings by taking them into consideration after he presented them, and learning to be better people.

I guess everyone deserves a second chance, as long as they're actually going to use it. I've been burned so many times before, that my thoughts regarding second chances and making mistakes have become quite cynical. I wonder what other aspects of my life this sort of thinking permeates?

[Kizzie]

Hey Widdiful - great job of capturing the difference between your SO's parents' and yours and the results for both of you - your FOO subjected you to ongoing abuse whereas your SO's made a mistake which they learned from and then changed their approach.   

My M has a personality disorder (PD) and simply does not see that she ever makes a mistake and as such would not take advantage of a second chance because she does not think she needs one.  I don't know that I forgive her exactly, but I do understand that she has a disorder and don't expect the same things from her that I do from people who don't have a PD.  I can forgive the latter when they own up to it in a genuine way, but I too find myself being cynical at times and who wouldn't after what we grew up with?

[Widdiful Falling]

I agree, and I'm trying not to be too hard on myself for my initial anger. It is understandable, and I learned from the situation, after all. My SO's parents learned from their mistake, and I am forgiving them, so why shouldn't I afford the same kindness to myself? My inner critic seems to think otherwise, though.

[marycontrary]

This is a really good video on forgiveness by Ross Rosenberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6pROjCwsE0


I think the important thing is not forgiveness, but whether it is eating you up on the inside. The big, big thing is to control stress and to eventually make your perpetrators a non entity in your existence. Forgiveness is such a dodgy word with multiple interpretations. The key is to be in a place where they are not even in your mind, as your life has grown enough to push them out

[Widdiful Falling]

I enjoyed the video, and I ended up watching many more of his, today. He really knows what he's talking about. I really enjoyed the one about BPD. It really served to highlight the difference between people who display suicidal tendencies, and people with BPD.

What my SO's parents did to him doesn't eat me up inside. It's resolved.

What my parents did to me, and others, does eat away at me. There can be no resolution. I will likely never forgive them.

[no_more_fear]

I'll have to check that video out, marycontrary. Thanks for that.

I understand exactly how we react when we hear of injustice to other's, and it's very hard to forgive, even if they have changed. We refuse to admit that people can change, even with evidence like that of your SO's. We've been hotwired to believe that everyone is bad, it's part of who we are and a big step to recovery is to overcome that.

As far as forgiveness goes, I don't think I'll be there for a long time, if ever. As has been said, the goal at the minute for me is to put them out of my head which is proving impossible right now as my abusers live mere blocks from me.

[Sandals]

This might not be the most popular opinion, but I do think it's possible to reach a point where you stand, hand on your heart, and forgive even unrepentant abusers for the past. Even while making the decision that you are letting the relationship go, as that is also a choice you now have as an adult.

[smg]

The book Forgiving and Not Forgiving by Jeanne Safer discusses exactly this. Safer's thesis is that "forgiveness as it is commonly understood is only one of many routes to resolution, humanity, and peace." She presents case studies describing various betrayals, the victims' processes of reengaging with the past event and coming to terms with it. The resolutions include
- forgivness and a return to the former relationship with the betrayer,
- forgivness from a protective distance,
- non-forgivness without vindictivness, and
- still-working-on-it.
If I remember correctly, there's a list of stages to the process of re-engaging with the betrayal and reaching resolution. They are stages, rather than steps because there is a lot of emphasis in this book on not forcing false forgivness.

smg

[coda]

This is such an interesting & important subject to me. Growing up, attacks came from all sides but in different ways. I was "officially" more afraid of my father than my mother. He could be explosively angry, threatening, sometimes violent. He embarrassed me in public. He rarely communicated. And yet, I do forgive him, wholeheartedly. And I still love him, though he died many years ago. I look back at those times with clarity - I'm not dismissing them or diminishing the terror I felt. But I think the difference between him and my mother was he didn't want or need to get inside my head. There was no psychological manipulation, no demand that I side with him while he attacked or love him more afterward. He did not expect me to be him or represent him in some way I didn't understand. He didn't want me to read his mind, and he didn't play games: when he got mad you'd know it and you'd know why, even if it was unreasonable. He didn't use me as his surrogate, therapist, personal assistant, best friend or peer. He was gruff and remote, unreachable. Point is, I was free to despise him, and I sometimes did. My hatred didn't "destroy" him, he was an adult. That freedom meant I was also free to be myself...and ultimately, to forgive him.

After so much "work" on this stuff, I've come to theorize that much of his behavior was rooted in sheer, maddening frustration - the kind of crazy, howling anger only my mother could engender. That doesn't excuse it, of course - but short of just leaving (for us it's NC) I can't think of another way to get healthy.

[Kizzie]

Make no mistake, it's the tsunami of the near future and I for one expect to be riding the wave.

That's exactly what I think too SB.  And when I am having a down day, I think about the fact that we are creating a ripple by coming together, that we are pushing out to professionals and the public so that CPTSD becomes better known and understood. 

And the one idea I love the most of all, is that some young  Kizzie or Southbound somewhere will not go what we went through because we are brave enough to come here and are open after years, decades even of being silent. 

We are the ripple that will become the tsunami 

[coda]

True that. I think I really meant "safe", perhaps even healthier. The anger & confusion are surely hard to shake even decades later, and the damage done...well it can seem incalculable. But first you have to get away from it, out from under it. Not possible as a child. Adults have autonomy...or should. The tragedy is when they can't see what's being done to them. If they could, they would run for their lives.

Health, healing, recovery, safety...for me these have become relative terms. In terms of forgiveness, I try to choose what makes self-acceptance a bit easier. That includes forgiving myself, and sometimes I see all humanity as a long, long-suffering line of unwitting victims and equally unwitting perpetrators.

[sasha~]

I'm not sure if forgiveness is ever going to be on my radar. I'm probably in the non-forgiveness but non-vengeful place. I have no desire to destroy my abusers or get back at them. All I want is to stay as far away as I can for the rest of my life. I will feel tremendous relief when my uBPDM is dead - not from vengeance but because I think I'll be able to breathe properly for the first time.