HOW TO FORGIVE

There are lots of professionals who urge forgiveness, saying that forgiving helps victims heal.

This is true, but knowing how to forgive a straying lover or a childhood persecutor or abuser still eludes many. Whether the damage done has to do with being physically or verbally assaulted or if someone was particularly mean to you, forgiveness is not as simple as simply wishing the injury away.

Sometimes, you just want it to be like the event never happened. You want to forget, so you "forgive."

Victims don't want their injury to define their lives and I get that. We also have trouble cutting some people completely out of our lives, wanting to stay friends, even though we don't want to be married to/date/stay romantically involved with people.

Pretty much, we suck at knowing how to end relationships.

It is perhaps most challenging to recover after childhood sexual abuse. Way too many people have had this trauma visited on them--and let me add that none of them deserved it. None. No kid is bad enough to deserve abuse. Sadly, many of these individuals are abused by family members or close family friends. People they want to continue being involved with.

The mixed feelings in this situation are horrendous. Imagine loving the same person who abused you. Very complicated.

Still, forgiveness is good for you. Struggling through life, continuing to hate another person is exhausting. It also can get in the way of third-party relationships. Girlfriends who's husbands attacked you when you were drunk. Your own husband who has been unfaithful to you and now says he just wants to move forward, like it never happened. Forgiveness may be attractive because it seems like it'll lift some of the burden you bear.

But doing this without confronting it completely, won't really help.

After all, your continuing to hate someone doesn't really hurt him. So, how do you forgive someone who betrayed you or assaulted you and stole your childhood?

Forgiveness of a trauma requires you to forgive yourself first. Like the victim of sexual abuse, you never deserve to be cheated on or lied to. Don't tell me all the bad things you've done or how many times you were a witch in the relationship. Betrayal is still betrayal. Even if you did it first, the other person's actions are not excused.

Forgiveness requires acceptance of the injury--this happened to me. Whether you're struggling to cope with a childhood episode or with the infidelity of a partner who promised to stay true, you need to accept what happened...and realize that no matter what you did or didn't do, you didn't deserve the injury.

The next step is to assess whether or not the person who offered you this injury is actually sorry for whatever was done(don't assume this too easily). Maybe so. Maybe not. What you really have to consider is whether or not the relationship in which you were injured is healthful to you overall or not.

Tricky stuff.

You can't forgive/forget an assault to a relationship if the perpetrator doesn't 1.) express remore (really, really, really really sorry) and 2.) change his or her behavior. Big change and if this is an infidelity betrayal, you need to 3.) fix the problems that were in the relationship before the action. And all this has to be sustained, not just a easily glossed-over return to how it was before. Otherwise, you're just asking for a repeat of the hurt that led you here in the first place.

You can forgive a perpetrator who isn't sorry...you just have to remember that this person is himself damaged and can't be trusted in the future.

Forgiveness is about letting go. Believing that the one who hurt you will experience consequences from the universe. You don't have to stalk her down. (Of course, any appropriate legal action has to be considered. You may not choose to pursue it, but you need to think about it.)

Most importantly, don't assume that you can move on without forgiving yourself. You're not perfect. No one is. But you didn't deserve this.