Can we help them? Perhaps with some ideas and suggestions, but ultimately it's up to the individual to choose and act.

Before responding further, however, I think that a "definition of terms" is called for with respect to your question.

So, how do you, MEDC, define "forgiveness?"

I ask that because I personally believe there are different types of "forgiveness" just as there are different types of "love." So it would be helpful to know the various definitions you might be thinking about when you say "forgiveness," especially as it applies to such a hurtful offense as adultery.

Whether or not you can "avoid" the biblical "ideals" of forgiveness of sin depends a lot on whether or not the individual you are seeking to help in this area is a believer theirself or not. So when you say you don't mind a "mention" of a "religious ideal," just how limited do you envision such a mention of what God's "commands" and "meanings" of forgiveness are before it crosses whatever line you are thinking about as a "mention" rather than a more in depth discussion?

Is it not possible to let go without forgiveness? I could use my first XH as an example. He was physically and emotionally abusive and I literally ran away from that M. He hasn't been in my life in almost 20 years. It was a long time ago and I hardly give a thought about it. I don't harbour any hatred or anger towards him but I certainly haven't forgiven him.

Regarding empathy and forgiveness...

My wife's father left her family when she was a baby. For 45 years, her mother has carried the anger and bitterness over his betrayal around with her. Now that she is developing Alzheimer's, it is really showing that, at the core, she has been marinating in bitterness so long that it essentially defines who she is. She is, most of the time, a very hateful person who has shut herself up in a prison of her own making, who refuses to enjoy life, and who is determined to be miserable.

None of this unforgiveness affected my late father-in-law. He went on in a carefree manner, ignoring his obligations. He never paid child support, spoke to his kids about once a year while they were growing up, and had a merry time. He married 7 other women and was engaged to number eight when he died. As my wife and brother-in-law became adults, he had a relationship of sorts with them, but it wasn't a close one at all. He was very happy in his life, he had money and friends and a house.

When he died, my wife and BIL flew out to his house in Las Vegas... and they discovered that his entire life was a sham. He didn't own a house, as he had told us. He rented. He didn't have as much money as he had implied - he had a sum of money that had been a settlement from his divorce from his very wealthy last wife. His "fiancee", whose very existance my W and BIL had not known before, was a gold-digger. FIL had been after us to have insurance and have wills, etc, but he died without a will and without any life insurance.

The topping on the cake was that he had given us a phone number to call after he died so that W and BIL could get the remaining money from his pension plan. When W called that number... she was told that he had taken a lump sum when he retired and there was no money remaining in the pension plan. (So why did he bother to tell us about it?)

His entire life - including his memorial service - was a lie. His children shed no tears over his passing. His brother, who he hadn't spoken to for 45 years, didn't bother to attend the service. The rabbi who performed the service had been misinformed by FIL's "fiancee", and made a point of stressing how FIL had always taken financial care of his family - which rendered even his eulogy a complete lie.

W and BIL found a bulletin board in his house - with pictures of them as children, and pictures they had drawn and sent to him as children. They also found a stack of letters they had written him as children. I read some of these when she brought them home, and it was heartbreaking to read the letters she wrote as a six-year old asking "When are you coming to visit us? Why don't you call more often?" He saved all of these.

Who knows what he thought of himself. But despite what a cold-hearted SOB he had been in his life, I cannot help but feel bad for someone who, through his own bad choices, built an empty life on a foundation of lies and died unlamented.

Without excusing him as a person, I have empathy for the way he turned out. My wife has made her peace with him. My BIL probably has not. My MIL will never forgive him, and she has paid the price for not forgiving him and for carrying that burden throughout her life.

For me i don't think i have trouble with the forgiveness part (like i said i don't think). It is the forgetting part that gets me. Whenever i think about the fact that my H had an A i just get angry.

I withdraw and just become a not very nice person (which is not my normal personality). I do not think i would have let him come back home if i did not forgive him, but forgetting about all the things that he did and said to me during the A is SOOOOO very hard.

I just can not get over them i replay them in my head so much that it is like a recording. Nothing seems to trigger them they are just there pretty much all the time.

I find that i really do not believe anything my H tells me even though before the A i had never known of him to lie to me. However during the A i am not sure if he ever told the truth so i really do not believe him when he tells me things now.

I don't think i show it to him but he might as well be talking to a wall as to tell me about his schedule because i truly do not believe him about it.

That is the saddest part to me i guess is that i feel like our marriage will never be the same (and i felt we had a good M pre-a). I feel like these thoughts will ALWAYS be in my head.

Maybe making the decision to forgive is the first step.

Maybe it's something you have to practice after making the initial decision, something you have to work at until you get to the point where you have internalized the forgiveness.

God can forgive and forget... but it can be very hard for us...

Tabby,
This is what I'm getting at. I can let go of the anger/resentment over time. I don't know if that is synonymous with forgiveness. If you look up the definition, one of many is...



For me, I'm not sure what forgiveness will look like; I'm not sure if I attach it with restitution or not. I have forgiven my mother her trespasses, I have forgiven my stepfather, my father, my grandmother, my sister, myself. In many cases, there was no means for restitution, as the offending party was deceased, or completely gone from my life. It did take a great deal of time, and gaining new knowledge and empathy. I try to see the perspective of the offending party.

I have no persective when it comes to my WH right now. It's still pretty raw. He is still here, and has lied to me for all these months, resulting in ANOTHER false recovery. I have to work toward forgiving myself, much less him.

i don't know if I can forgive this though. I'm not sure.

well said.

good that is the sole purpose of this thread.


My definition is not relevant as it may not be shared by others.


Actually the ability to "avoid" this turning into a Biblical lesson about forgiveness is dependent only on those posting ideas and suggestions here. Good Christian's, even those that know what God commands, still have problems meeting the ideals laid out in Scripture.

The sole purpose of this thread is to give ideas and suggestions concerning forgiveness that would apply to all people...from Christian to atheist.

Silentlucidity, I think your wiki definition may have identified part of the problem. Is simply "letting go" or "ceasing to feel" all there is to forgiveness? I always thought it was more than that. For example, when we teach these issues to children, we teach them to apologize for their misbehavior, say calling their brother names, and we teach the brother to accept the apology and continue to play nicely afterwards. As in, the brother is supposed to "forgive" the name caller, but only after an apology is made. For more serious transgressions, such as breaking a neighbours window with a baseball, there may be restitution in addition to the apology (must help neighbour with yardwork for a period of time to "pay" for the broken window).

In dealing with infidelity, some WS's have apologied, offered and attempted restitution of some sort. Their BS could go through a similar forgiveness prossess, assuming they can actually let go of their anger. Damage done by an A is not as easily repaired as a broken window. Some WS's apologize, but never follow through with restitution (or pretend to but don't). These WS's are still committing transgressions toward their BS. And other WS's never so much as acknowledge that they have even committed a transgression. So we never have the chance to carry out those lessons we learned as children.

That doesn't mean we have to carry those negative feelings around forever, either. According to the wiki def, I guess I have forgiven my XH. But no, I don't think so. To be able to say that, I'd have to be willing to give him a clean slate. That is just not going to happen. He did it, it was done.

Tabby, we ARE on the same wavelength here. I too was taught to apologize and to make amends where appropriate. I am, however, teaching my son that, even when someone apologizes, the pain may still remain, and it is up to us to work toward letting it go, because it is OUR pain.

In my case, I haven't seen a touch of remorse. I've gotten apologies, here and there, in writing, but the continued lying erases them, IMO. The alienation has been a lot to bear, considering all this time I have been bending over to find ways to give. He's either a bottomless pit, or the LB is CLOSED to me.

Much of my anger over the A's is gone. It's not the affairs that has hurt me the most, it's the complete and utter lack of honesty, and respect, that has continued for three years now. WH did not HAVE to come back here, he CHOSE to, fully well KNOWING he did not want to recover. He wanted to not be broke and not miss his son. IMO, that was not a good enough reason to LIE to me. All he had to do was ask for more time with DS. Why cause me further hurt? I can only assume that I meant so little, that hurting me was of little consequence to him. Hopefully, someday, WH will set me straight on this one. Maybe he isn't even really clear on WHY he did this.

I will never forget what has happened; it cannot be erased. I'm more interested in letting the anger go than forgiveness. If letting go IS forgiveness, then I suppose WH will eventually be forgiven.

Well if this is the true definition of forgiveness then i am far from it and may NEVER forgive my FWH.

As it stands right now i do not think i will ever FORGET about the A and i will also always demand restitution by way of it never happening again and by keeping our M in the forefront at all times.

Tabby, If we go by the definition, you have forgiven your WH. There is nothing that says that we have to FORGET in order to FORGIVE. I don't believe in a clean slate. There is no CHALK when it comes to these things; it's permanent ink.

I DO believe that offering to make amends makes it easier for the offended party to forgive.

Great thought provoking thread MEDC.

This is not like forgiving someone for leaving the window down on your car during a rain storm. Adultery goes way beyond the pale. This was an act that causes both emotional and real physical trauma to the betrayed. And it was done by the one person they trusted most in their life.

To truly forgive it is probably necessary to forget the transgression as well. That will never happen for me. I will not allow her adultery to be the event in my life that defines me, but it is an event that has forever changed me.

To me forgiveness would require regret (never happened) repentance (won’t happen without regret) rehabilitation (that’s Gollum’s problem now) and in truth for me at least, some measure of restitution. Maybe someday my daughter may receive some of this from her mother, but it is unbelievable that I will see any of it.

I believe time will bring a measure of forgiveness but never complete because I will never forget. I suspect my healing will be about as complete as it will get when I reach total indifference regarding my XWW, what she did and what is going on in her life. When I can go weeks or months or even years without reflection of the adultery, when I can look back at the good times of our 26 year marriage with fondness, when I stop caring if the Karma Bus is running her down or not I will have reached my desired level of indifference.

This post reminds me of something my 6 year old said to her teacher a few weeks ago. A couple of weeks prior her religious education teacher talked to the class about anger and forgiveness.

I went into my daughter’s class and the kids were resting. The teacher pulled me aside and told me this story.

There are 2 kids that are constantly acting up in class and also PE class. She went to get the kids from the PE teacher and found out they had misbehaved again. She reprimanded the children and admitted to me she was angry because this was an ongoing problem. Later in the morning my daughter came up to her and put her hand on her shoulder. She said "Mrs. Wade, my religious education teacher told me that holding on to anger is like holding on to a bunch of rocks." Then Mrs. Wade said "Do you think I should put down the rocks?" And my daughter said "I think that would be best." Her teacher gave her a big hug. Sometimes children know better than we do.

It would be interesting to hear from those who have forgiven their WS, in the absense of regret, restitution or rehabilitation.

I feel like a fool sometimes because I walk around with so much anger and resentment toward my WH.

It's been a year since he left our M and I have made some progress in putting the past behind and moving on. I feel like sometimes the reason we haven't reconciled is my fault. Because I've been holding on to this anger and resentment for his actions and I can't seem to hold anything back. SO LB all the time.

I wish there was an easy way to let go of the anger and resentment. I've been reading books and books and things have improved in terms of letting go of some of the anger. But there are times it just rages in and I can't hold it back. Sometimes I feel like it's turning me into a bitter pathetic person. Like why can't you just let it go. I feel like most of this is because I haven't forgiven him.

I've been thinking of trying yoga and meditation. I need something to help me move on. I don't want to end up a bitter angry person because I can't forgive someone else.

Silent,

I know exactly how you feel about false recovery. I went through more than one myself and the last time my wh moved back in, my company had closed so we both thought it would be best although we were both trying to work on things as well (or so I thought).

In the end, he only moved back because, like yours, it was cheaper for him to do so. 2 incomes are better than one. He did no work whatsoever and also, continued to have affairs.

So, like you, I wonder why in the h*ll did he come home? Why not just stay gone and save a lot of anger and heartache.

mlhb

Okay, MEDC, then what "model" of forgiveness should be used? What "level" of forgiveness is appropriate and what "level" is too much to ask?

Why should anyone forgive someone and what do they do with the memory, since they are not likely to forget?

Put another way, what have I been forgiven of that would "merit" my reciprocity of forgiving offenses against me, even serious offenses such as adultery?

mlhb,

Hindsight will kill me, if I let it. I COULD have prevented all of this, had I just held out on him moving back in. I am angry with myself for believing his words. I will have to deal with that first, forgiving myself, before I can move on to releasing him. In all reality, he may not give one hoot as to whether I forgive him or not. I don't know if I will give a hoot either.

FH, you seem to be the ONLY person on this thread that is having a problem with the topic.
What "model" of forgiveness? Huh?

I do not think forgetting is necessary to forgive.

If you wish to have a philosophical debate about this, please start another thread.

This thread has a purpose of practical advice/suggestions to help people forgive.