What does forgiveness mean to you?

[Beach_Babe]

What does forgiveness mean to you?

Does it mean being OK with their behavior or more an acceptance they cannot help it?

[pjstock42]

For me, forgiveness simply meant being able to let go of something that was no longer worth having any mental energy devoted to it. It meant being able to move forward with my life without constantly giving this person free rent in my head through resting them for the horrible things that they did to me. I'll never be 'OK' with her behavior but I also will not allow myself to let me life veer off course just due to her actions since they were never something that I could control and are now in the past.

[rfriesen]

Forgiveness has meant a lot of different things along the way for me. At first, it meant letting go of her provocations, not reacting and trying to make her see how she was acting in a hurtful way and not trying to make her feel responsible. Forgiveness in the beginning was about stepping back from the dynamics I was caught up in and starting to detach from them.

Second, it meant recognizing that the hurtful things she did to me (venting her rage, falsely accusing me of cheating, lying to me, cheating on me herself, etc) were part of larger patterns of behaviour for her and that she acted that way because she had very few tools and emotional resources with which to deal with conflicting emotions. For me, this is not at all the same as "being OK" with her behaviour, and even less saying that her behaviour itself was "OK". I'm not trying to excuse her behaviour, but put it in context and see it "bigger picture", which I take to be part of detaching.

Third, I came to forgive myself for the emotional triggers she had set in me. While I was still with my ex, I had to work so hard to deal with my own conflicting emotions. Instead of lashing out in rage like she did, I would always try to remind myself of how I loved her and then express my hurt and anger in respectful ways to her. Once we were finished and broken up for good, I was left with the swirl of emotions - and constantly ruminating on some of the things she had done could lead me to turning over and over in my mind all the ways I wanted her to know she had been selfish, cruel, unfaithful, etc. Instead of repressing those feelings, I slowly learned to observe my own emotions, accept that they were my emotions and I didn't have to fight them off or repress them. Once I realized that, I could accept them fully and then begin letting them go.

Finally, in the stage I'm at now (four and a half months after the final break-up), I'd say that, for me, forgiveness means being able to recall the way our relationship evolved and all the crazy dynamics it involved and not to want to fix it, no longer to feel my emotional energy caught up in wanting to change the past. I'm not entirely there yet, but I hope eventually to be able to remember the good and the bad - without pining away for the former and without feeling anger or pain at the latter. I've learned a lot through this relationship and I want to be grateful for that.

Overall, forgiveness for me has been a process of accepting the emotions that I've experienced and continue to experience as a result of the relationship with my ex, and learning to let go of the desire to change them or chase them away. As I learn to let go of that, a lot of the negative emotions themselves fade away. In particular, I feel less and less need/desire to have my ex "see how wrong" she was or "feel guilt and remorse" for how she behaved or to suffer in any way for having hurt me. For her own sake, I hope she gets better and finds stability and lasting happiness. Forgiveness for me means I let go of any desire to see her hurt for what she's done, and I no longer feel any of my own emotional or mental energy drained in that direction.

[fromheeltoheal]

I heard a quote a while ago that has helped me quite a bit, in different situations with different people:

"The act of forgiving is letting go of what you feel another owes you."

Simple but powerful, and letting go doesn't take any work, you just let go and let whatever it is fall away... .

[rfriesen]

fromheeltoheal,
Yes, absolutely, I think that captures simply and powerfully what I was trying to express in my long ramble. And I would add that "letting go of what you feel another owes you" does not mean that you come to see what another person did as "OK" -- it just means that you let go of wanting some consequence to flow from their actions (e.g., them feeling regret or being hurt the same way they've hurt you).

I would also just add that, for me at least, letting go does take work. Sometimes the emotions you need to let go of are deep and painful and you may have built up a number of defence mechanisms or patterns of behaviour to avoid feeling the full force of those emotions. It did take me a lot of work to stop those patterns of behaviour (e.g. ruminating on the hurtful things my ex did and imagining all the ways she could come to see how wrong she was). It wasn't easy for me to put those patterns of behaviour aside and focus on what I was feeling and what it was doing to me. That said, once I was able to turn my mind back onto my own emotions and accept them for what they were, then I agree that the negativity eventually starts falling away of its own accord.

The hard work, for me, was in getting my mind to stop trying to spin my emotions one way or another ("well of course I feel X, because she did Y, and how can someone do Y when she says she loves you? how can she forget when she told me Z and I did XYandZ for her, and ... ." on and on my mind used to spin)

[fromheeltoheal]

I would also just add that, for me at least, letting go does take work. Sometimes the emotions you need to let go of are deep and painful and you may have built up a number of defence mechanisms or patterns of behaviour to avoid feeling the full force of those emotions. It did take me a lot of work to stop those patterns of behaviour (e.g. ruminating on the hurtful things my ex did and imagining all the ways she could come to see how wrong she was).

Yes, there's a lot of work involved in not feeling strong emotions, and then there's work involved in untangling all of that so we can feel again, the best kind of work, that's where all the growth is, and then, the letting go is effortless and freeing, the payoff yes?

[StayStrongNow]

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner was you."
Lewis B. Smedes

Ultimately forgiveness is for the person who is doing the forgiving.

Right now I am in the Understanding Stage, the Sad Stage and the still the Anger Stage. I just made these stages up but they fit where I am at. Someday I think I will be tired of my stbxBPDw and she won't bother me any more. These seeds have already been planted and the answers that I need will get me to a place where I feel peace and eventual sympathy.

Yes, sympathy for anyone who has BPD, they have been given gifts to charm and convince people but the BPD mask only hides the real person who has such horrible handicaps to deal with everyday life. I don't.

I hope soon it will not be about BPD anymore. It's about me accepting, forgiving and moving on.

[rfriesen]

Yes, there's a lot of work involved in not feeling strong emotions, and then there's work involved in untangling all of that so we can feel again, the best kind of work, that's where all the growth is, and then, the letting go is effortless and freeing, the payoff yes?

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. The feeling of letting go is incredibly freeing. It has been a very gradual process -- feelings of letting go, breathing more freely, walking lighter, ... .then finding my stomach knotting up again a little bit, catching my mind ruminating again, ... .and then again bringing my focus back, putting the ruminating thoughts aside, feeling the knots untangle, ... .

I think we are truly saying the same thing. I feel I've put in a lot of work to gently remind myself to bring my focus back from the ruminations and reflections on my ex's behaviour, towards accepting my own feelings for what they are (and not trying to justify, explain, calibrate them with respect to my ex's actions and feelings - just letting them be, without feeling any need to do anything about what I'm feeling other than letting my feelings be what they will be, while I get on with my day and focus on what I'm doing). And when I succeed in doing that I'm able to let go a little more, always a little more, and that is tremendously freeing, yes.