the OW/OM? When does that happen? I do feel forgiving at times, but then at other times I feel raging anger.

Also, for people who communicate with the OW/OM's spouse, how do you help each other work through this? I sometimes hold things back, like talking about H because I don't want to trigger him. I want us both to come to a place where we can forgive if that is possible.

I'll forgive him when he compensates me for my loss.

If it drags us both to h3ll, then so-be-it.

What you are in sounds like BS fog to me. I remember, shortly after the affair, my husband saying, "It's all up to you. You have to forgive me." No. No. No. The affair was not "one mistake", as he put it. It was a philosophy of life, at least for him, a philosophy that said he was justified in making choices that he knew would hurt me.

If you are angry, as I was -- terribly angry, then what you might be doing is trying to convince him that he was not justified.

A friend of mine told me, "Don't run interference for his conscience."

Look at ark's Be Still thread. I'll bump it for you. Your job right now is not to forgive. It is to wait. Wait for his remorse.

As for communicating with OWH, I'd communicate only about information regarding whether they would have seen each other. You have the potential to become emotionally involved with OWH because of shared trauma and willingness to talk intimately. It does happen. You are vulnerable to an affair. All of us are.

Cherished

Forgive my H?
Absolutely! It all seems like it happened to someone else, in a book or in a movie. It's been... over six years ago.

Forgive OW?
No, but I don't "not" forgive her either. I simply don't put energy into thinking about her. I have better things to do with my time and thoughts.

I forgave OM (multiples) because they were given false information about exww's marital status. They were told she was divorced/divorcing when it wasn't true.

So it was hard to hold something against them when they were operating under false pretenses.

I don't really feel any need to forgive OW. She is and never was anything to me except a morally corrupt oxygen-consuming toxic piece of homewrecking slime. I don't know her in any other context and sure as heck feel no guilt about my contempt for her. In fact, she's a convenient excuse for all the world's problems - even the CO2 she exhales contributes to global warming with absolutely no benefit to this earth whatsoever. So no, I'm not going to forgive her. I'm not going to let her eat away at my soul either. She's just not worth it.

I haven't forgiven WstbxH either and it's unlikely I ever will. His actions towards me were too severe, and too many. In addition to the adultery (well, to accomodate the adultery), he lied, decieved and stole from me and DS, and went to great lengths to throw it all in my face. It's one thing to say "oops, I made a mistake" but the ongoing premeditated deception showed what kind of person he truly is, fog or no fog. He's not welcome back into my life and though God might, I will never forgive him for what he did.

My goal is not to forgive him so much, but to simply let go of the pain so it no longer poisons me, and grow a thick scar so he can't hurt me again. I'm a long way from where I started, but there's still more to go. When the day comes that he can't push my buttons over anything, I will have succeeded.

The goal isn't forgiveness, but not to stray from the road of recovery.

One day I hope to have someone ask about the X and I say, oh her, I forgot about that, I wonder what ever happened to her.

Luv,

I have to tell a little of my story so you can understand my thoughts on forgiveness.

I am the survivor of rape as a child, and of a series of rapes by a family member, and also of felony child abuse. I have had a lot to "forgive" in my life, the affair notwithstanding.

I know something about forgiving.

I had failed to move through the pain of the trauma of my childhood, and lived in the moments of those traumas day after day after day. It didn't take much to trigger my anger and pain, just a thought, a flash of a memory, even a moment of a song. Rages of anger, crying, hysteria even, were pretty common in my life. Whenever I had a disagreement with someone, I drew on the darkness of those events to fuel the energy behind the disagreement of the day - although it wasn't even related! There was plenty of anger to fuel any fire.

There came a time when it became apparent that I had to make a move - a choice between continuing on the path I was on, or finding a way to a new life without this anchor holding me to the past. I could not find anything to release the hold, because no amount of reading on rape or abuse held the "answer" I sought - there was NO answer to get rid of the triggers, the pain, the movies. No answer.

NO. ANSWER.

And I found myself thinking about moving forward, and leaving the events behind, because there had to be a way. I began to think about how the perpetrators win, every time. How they had control of me, how they had strength and power. How the events had strength and power. Even though they happened so long ago, they seemed to happen NOW, and the men were still right there with me. And I began to think of the men. What their character was, who they really were, inside of them.

I saw it clearly, right then and there. Those men were NOT strong men. They were broken men. They were weak in character, lost souls. They were dark in spirit, weren't they? Inside of them was guilt. They had no ability to stand up proudly and talk of their accomplishments without the truth of their actions scratching at their doors. They would forever be running from their memories of what they had done, wondering if they would be caught today, tomorrow....

They were lost and broken men.

They were weaker than I was. They were actually more in need than I was, and in that instant I realized that I "won". I stood stronger than they did - and somehow understood that they were the ones who should be losing sleep (and probably were).

I saw their brokenness. And then, I could forgive them.

It was in that moment that my healing from anger began. It was though the world was made new, and whole.

There was color and sound again, in a world once black and grey, muffled. The world came alive with smells and sounds and light and color, and I was alive and breathing, whole and new.

That anchor to the past? I heaved that anchor in that moment. I have been free of the memories of the abuse, the rape, and the rest, and have truly forgiven. And I have helped many people since then do the same.

Hope this helped.



The short version of this is:

Find in the other person his brokenness. In that brokenness, you will find your ability to forgive, for you will see the other person's human soul.

SB

schoolbus, that was so powerful, so intimate, and so well said.
I want to cry, and hug you, and kick your family's arses all at the same time.
Thank you for sharing that.

I bumped it for ya....I have it in my Watched lists....

not2fun

ps...It was a good reminder for me to read.....

I, too, find it nearly impossible to forgive the OM in my wife's affairs. They never fully apologized and, in one case, in an staged attempt to apologize actually lied to my face about facts regarding their contact.

I will offer a quote that has helped me:


I won't say I fully endorse everything he says about forgiveness, but the wording of this quote helped me put aside my association between "forgiving" the offense and "excusing" the offense.

I can't say that I am (or will ever be) at the point where I can say:


I don't see me wishing the OM "well" ever.

Just my input.

Luvthesouth, it's actually difficult to come up with a description of OW that won't be edited out.

SB, I'm sorry for all the trauma you've had to go through. And I realize this is a question that has been raise before, but is what you are describing really forgiveness or is it something else? We've tried to define forgiveness on the board in the past and many have their different interpretations. For me, forgiveness requires at minimum remorse and possibly even restitution (which could be equally difficult to define exactly). Upon forgiveness, I will never hold that particular wrongdoing against that person again - not even in my mind (if it is true forgiveness).

What you describe I would call something else, though I don't know what. Acceptance is close but not quite right. I can accept these things that happened. I can let go anger and bitterness towards those who have wronged me (and I've got some serious baggage from way back as well). But I have not forgiven them. At least not by my definition of the term.

More on forgiving.

I never received an apology from the rapists.

How could they ever apologize?


Yet I have forgiven them.

Do I wish them "well"? Neither do I wish them well, nor harm.
I don't interact with them. They don't interact with me. I do not wish them harm, nor well, as to me they are no longer meaningful to me, if that makes any sense. They are not anything to me in my life, except people who once did something unthinkable to me, who were broken and lost and now are forgiven by me.

As for the OW. For any person in an affair.

I listen to the justifications. I hear the so-called reasons. I see the twisted logic, the cries of neediness. I listen to the pain of people lost in the world, looking to find what they think is lost in their hearts, and *I* know is in their own home yet they search elsewhere, and they can't seem to see it or listen to advice that it is right there at HOME. I see them break vows that they themselves don't believe they would have broken. How can I not see THAT brokenness???

I recently had an encounter with OW in my case. I saw her in a bar/restaurant, and was triggered by the event. But was I angry with her? Did I "lose" my forgiveness of her?

No.

Because she is STILL a very broken person, and was at the time of the affair. At the bar, she was hitting on a man (she is still married). She still goes out, seeking something....what is it she seeks.......she hopes to find it in the pants of another man......of almost any man.....in the act of having sex...

I saw the panic in her eyes
I saw the look of neediness
How could I not see her brokenness?
How could I not see her as a pathetic soul, lost in the world?

How could I not cry for her?

And knowing what I know of her, how could I fail to forgive her in her brokenness?



Forgiveness was a gift I gave myself.

SB

This explains what I was trying to say far better. I have reached this stage with people who have wronged me in the past. I will reach it again with OW and WstbxH. But I don't see this as forgiveness. In my mind, forgiveness is quite different and is not a stage I will ever get to with these 2 people at least.

Tabby,

I could never have gotten to this point with the rapists if I hadn't forgiven them.

They held too much power in my life.

When I realized they were broken people, I was able to forgive them. To understand them as broken, lost souls, then I was able to understand enough to forgive them. It was over the course of time, certainly, that they became "non-issues" in my world to the extent that they are now. But I can say that immediately after I forgave them, their power was reduced by so much that I took control of my life, whereas before the forgiveness point, THEY WERE IN CONTROL OF VIRTUALLY EVERY EMOTION I HAD, in spite of myself.

Once I forgave them, I was able to move away from them over time.

Had I not forgiven, I would have carried these men with me forever.

A very heavy load. For with them, I carried my anger and theirs, too.

My rage, and theirs, too.

My pain, and theirs, too.

My darkness, and theirs, too.

My guilt, my shame, my hurt, my sleeplessness, my bitterness, my desperation, and theirs, too.

In the moment I saw their brokenness, I saw my own.

In the moment I forgave them, I released them from my life, and along with them I released all that they brought with them.

No longer did I carry them with me.

And the events that they brought upon me - somehow, I took control that day over those events.

I won.

By forgiving them, I gave MYSELF the gift.

I freed MYSELF.



It sounds counter-intuitive. It is the absolute truth nonetheless.

No, the movies didn't disappear magically. But I will tell you that the change that day was magical. I took control, and was able to make the movies stop, the anger stop, the rages stop, all of it. My world changed because of the choice to forgive. The perspective of my LIFE changed in the choice to forgive.

It was in the immersion of forgiveness that my life changed.

It was a choice I never regretted.

SB

Schoolbus,

That was another good one. I am going to print it out and save it for my DD 14, who struggles continously with her SA. I know forgiveness is the only way she will receive peace. But it is hard to explain this to a 14 yr. old.....

not2fun

I needed to hear this today. Thank you so much for this post. I'll read it over and over again.

Tears steam down my face as I read these posts. My goal is forgiveness - for ME, to break the chains to those who have hurt me. Forgiveness is about me not them. I'm the one who will be a better mom and wife when I do. This is the goal. I HATE living with the burden to hold something over my H or OW head. I want to move on and enjoy life. It's all a process that takes time but I'm going to make it and be of help to someone else down the road with my experience.