Apologies, forgiveness, reconciliation, amends part 2[Christian Discussion]

[formflier]

This is a continuation of this thread https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=333756.0

Good discussion.  Keep it up.

Full disclosure:  I'm writing these responses without doing any particular study.  I think I'm familiar

I am not a believer in asking for forgiveness from another person.  Forgiveness comes from God.  If I am going to apologize to a person, I say I am sorry, but I don't ask for them to forgive me.

Aren't there places in the Bible where people ask others to be forgiven.  Even in the Lord's prayer we are asking God to forgive us and also there is talk of us forgiving others.

My thought about asking another person for forgiveness is it is a vulnerable act... .they can say no.

If you say "I'm sorry... ."... .it's kinda odd for someone else to say "No you are not... "

On a related topic, I don't see anywhere in the Bible that gives a person the right to demand an apology.  If I have an issue with a person, I state my issue and then let it go.  Whether they choose to apologize is up to them.  

I would agree with the very specific assertion about "demanding and apology".  Christianity and "demanding"  anything usually are and odd pair to put together.

I do believe the Bible instructs us to bring up obvious sin in other people... directly to those people.

Very detailed instructions about how to do this in (Matthew I believe).  Go to them privately, then bring others... then take it to the church.

The focus is on "winning them back" from sin and welcoming them back into the fold of the church.  I really don't see it as punitive.

The only time I see "punitive" is when someone that is claiming Christianity continues and basically "flips the bird" to the church.  Let's say there is an open, unrepentant affair and the church has spoken to them and they have rejected repentance and reconciliation.

Thoughts?  Do you see the same "guidance" that I see?

FF

[radoe]

I ask God for forgiveness

Sincere apologies only aggrevate my partner.
the way they see it "If I was really sorry I would have changed"
A person should only make each mistake once in their life, because they were sorry and changed their behavior.

God's perfect love takes care of our BPD

[Enabler]

I've tried to find the article I'm going to refer to but it was entitled something like "Why you shouldn't accept an apology". The article made some good points but ultimately it was more to do with the motivations of the person apologizing. The article suggested that the apology was more for the person apologizing not for the person accepting/rejecting the apology. As a person who has been wronged, I don't want your cheap words which release you from the emotional hurt of knowing that you have wronged me, I want you to be accountable, change your ways and make good where you can. My responsibility is to allow that person the opportunity to do those things whilst not being punitive. My responsibility is not placing myself in a position where I could continue to be hurt.

If it was a choice between an apology or someone describing accurately what they did, demonstrate that they have made changes to their behaviour and make reparations where possible... .I choose the later.

I have to say sorry to God as he knows everything, I can give him nothing and he knows I am incapable of meeting his perfect standard.

[I Am Redeemed]

Aren't there places in the Bible where people ask others to be forgiven.  Even in the Lord's prayer we are asking God to forgive us and also there is talk of us forgiving of us forgiving others.

Yes:

Ephesians 4:32: "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."

Luke 17:4: "And if he sins against you seven times a day and returns to you seven times, saying 'I repent', forgive him."

Matthew 5:23-24: "So if you are offering  your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift."

I do believe the Bible instructs us to bring up obvious sin in other people... directly to those people.

Very detailed instructions about how to do this in (Matthew I believe).  Go to them privately, then bring others... then take it to the church.

The focus is on "winning them back" from sin and welcoming them back into the fold of the church.  I really don't see it as punitive.

FF

Matthew 18:15-17: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector."

Luke 17:3: "If your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him."

Galatians 6:1: "Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted."

Here's the thing about forgiveness: It is something we are commanded to offer to others as Christians. That doesn't mean the person who harmed or offended us will repent. It doesn't mean that if we offend or harm someone that we will receive that person's forgiveness. The point is that we must be willing, with the right attitude of the heart, to both ask for forgiveness and offer forgiveness to others.

Unforgiveness causes a root of bitterness to take hold in our hearts. It leaves us open for the enemy to come in and gain a foothold. Forgiveness is not sweeping the broken pieces under the rug, nor ignoring the pain we may have suffered by the offense. It does not mean leaving ourselves open to the same kind of treatment. It does not mean the other person now has no consequences, nor does it mean that we reconcile with that person.

Repentance is the element that is necessary for reconciliation. Remorse should not be confused with repentance. Someone who says "I'm sorry", yet repeats the same behavior over and over is not repentant. Repentance does not demand forgiveness, nor does it manipulate someone into extending the Forgiveness/Immediate Reconciliation Package Deal without accountability from the offender.

It may not seem fair for God to require us to forgive others, but that is primarily because forgiveness is perceived incorrectly. God does not require us to reconcile when there is risk of repeated harm, nor does He promise that consequences will not befall the offender. Rather, He wants us to release our vengeful nature to Him and be free of it. We are not equipped as humans to hold such negative emotions within our spirits and not be affected.

Romans 12:19: " Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge, I will repay,' says the Lord."

God is the one who deals with the unrepentant. He wants us to release our anger, bitterness and resentment so that we may walk in love as He has instructed us to do.

That does not mean that these emotions simply go away. It is a process. We may have to release them to God over and over as we feel them come up, but this active trust in God also releases our faith and gives it the power to work.


Redeemed

[empath]

Aren't there places in the Bible where people ask others to be forgiven.  Even in the Lord's prayer we are asking God to forgive us and also there is talk of us forgiving others.

There are a few places where people ask others to be forgiven; one is Joseph's brothers asking for his forgiveness. In that story, Joseph had been testing them to see if they were truly repentant before even revealing himself to them.

We are to forgive others as God forgives us. There are many verses that address our need to forgive others, sometimes, they say that our forgiveness is contingent on the other person's repentance.

The only time I see "punitive" is when someone that is claiming Christianity continues and basically "flips the bird" to the church.

There are also verses that address certain sins as destructive to the church -- celebrating activities that are considered to be sins would be one - those are causes to dis-associate from a person. Most likely, there has been some attempt to remedy the situation, but it hasn't worked and the sin continues. Other sins that are in this kind of category are what I think of as "verbal" sins - gossip, slander, verbal abuse, lying, etc. These are especially destructive to relationships and the community.

We are also supposed to confess our sins to one another. That confession is very unwise if one is confessing to a person who continues to engage in the "verbal sins"; it could be dangerous, even. I know this personally within my marriage and in a few church situations.

As I said to my dd14, there are some people that you can't make it right with.

[AskingWhy]

Apologies and forgiveness have a place in relationships, but one thing that is seldom discussed is the role of righteous anger.

Anger does have a place.  For Christians, do you recall what Christ did to the money changers in the temple in Matthew 21:12-13?  He overturned their tables because he was so angry at the disrespect.

One cannot go on and on forgiving and looking away.  At a certain point, you have to get angry and say, "This isn't right!"

Dr. Christiane Northrup, M.D. talks about too much "forgiveness" and what it can do to your body. She cites the incidence of diabetes among Buddhist monks whose monasteries were defiled.  Rather than have righteous anger, they forgave.  The diabetes was a way of telling them they were "too sweet"--literally.  Psychosomatic medicine in action.

I am at that point of endless forgiving for my uBPD H's repeatedly dysregulating (name-calling, divorce threats, punching holes in walls and doors, breaking objects, terrifying the pets, etc.) and am now standing up for myself.  The Stockholm syndrome had a hold on me for too long, and the veil has been pulled off my eyes.  Now is the time for my righteous anger at the abuse my H has heaped on me for so many years.  (H is a true coward.  While his children were growing up and teens, he tolerated their emotional abuse and emotional blackmail.  They lived on the other side of the state with their u NPD mother, H's X W.  They threatened never to visit him again if he did not buy them X Y or Z, or if he did not let them do this and that.  On the other hand, H would bully me for the smallest things that annoyed him.)

[Fian]

FF, others have responded a fair bit, but to add my 2 cents.  The passages listed above tell you to forgive others, and ask
God for forgiveness.  They don't say you have to ask others.

When it comes to forgiveness, I see it more as letting go, and letting God worry about punishment.  That doesn't mean you don't protect yourself against potential repeat offenders, but you are letting go of the hate.

[truthbeknown]

This is an interesting discussion, even for a non-Christian. I'm not sure how relevant the below is to FF's particular situation, but I was thinking about forgiveness and BPD generally, as it seems like this is a problem lots of people encounter.

It seems to me that asking for forgiveness hits right at the heart of what pwBPD struggle with the most. Forgiveness is, in large part, about asking someone else to give up or let go of certain emotions--resentment, anger, spite, vengeance, etc. It's hard to imagine someone holding on to all of those emotions and it being true that they have forgiven the person. To forgive is to give at least some of that up. (Which paves the way for possible reconciliation, which does seem to me to be the telos of forgiveness.)

So when we ask for forgiveness from a pwBPD, we are essentially asking them to regulate their emotions. If that's right, it's not surprising that this is a problem area in relationships. We are asking them to do something that is really, really, really hard--stop feeling a certain way.

In my own relationship, this played out with my wife wanting to forgive, but not being able to get rid of those feelings, or not for very long. Then she feels bad because she can't forgive, and that badness gets thrown back on me--I didn't ask the right way or do enough to be forgiven, i.e., I didn't successfully regulate her emotions.

Anyway, it just struck me as I was thinking about his how intimately connected forgiveness seems to be to emotional regulation.

I came on the board this morning because this is exactly what I am going through with my upBPD gf.  She is lovely and wonderful most of the time but if I "say the wrong thing" that triggers a childhood wound of her critical mom/ parents divorce etc. then she will shift into the angry parent mode and need me to apologize in a very specific way.  It's almost as if she has a hidden script and if I don't follow that script her anger just elevates.  She is not even aware of how angry she is when we have these altercations.  Last night I tried to apologize for some words that I said 2 nights ago that hurt her.  I realized that I didn't filter my frustration with her but I spent 2 hours on the phone with her talking about her boss at work and trying to help her see how avoiding her text messages and punishing her could hurt or even destroy the relationship.  She was more interested in proving that she was wounded by words that her boss said then seeing her boss was trying to reach out and repair.  It took two hours of talking for me to help her regulate or reconcile her feelings toward her boss.  I found out later that she did send a text message but in her message she still "needed" to tell her boss about her feelings.  I reacted negatively when she said, "I knew you wouldn't like my message but I needed to tell her how I felt anyway."   All I could see was the sabotaging behavior that people with BPD do.  I have been here before and now I was confronted with it again.  I was not able to stay composed.  I allowed myself to get dragged into her drama. 

So I was feeling bad about my part and texted her the next day, "i'm sorry for my part."  I learned this from some workshop a long time ago that instead of taking responsibility for everyone's part you apologize for YOUR part.  I did.  However this was not enough to make amends for my crime apparently.  She wanted more. A lot more. She wanted me to itemize all the things that I did to her to test me and see if I knew how I hurt her.  She (I felt) was holding me hostage of her emotions and trying to make me reconcile them because she doesn't seem to have the ability to dampen her negative feelings on her own.  Just like she holds her npd mom responsible for all her pain and problems in relationships she was holding me responsible for her bad feelings. 

I don't know how to overcome this and we are not married at this point.  I love her and care for her but I don't know if i'm willing to move forward with a person that has this much unresolved anger.

The only way to finally get out of her clutches of anger was to tell her i was hanging up the phone and that i was done with this conversation for the night- that i would not be yelled at anymore.  When i hung up I put the phone down and went for a walk.  Sadly to me, this is the only thing that got her to shift out of anger.  I had to be angry or perceived as being angry by her for her to snap out of her emotional state.  When i got back she called again (left 9 messages) and i picked up.  I explained i went out for a walk.  She had shifted out of anger and into the shamed little girl mode.

I am hurting right now because i feel like she is making me into her mom.  I have to run or dis-engage in order to get away from her anger after a disagreement.  Where normal people can have an argument, apologize and move on.  It took 3-4 hours last night for her to finally say she was sorry too!   The worst part is I feel horrible about having to dissengage with her (because it feels like rejection to her) but it's the only thing she seems to respond to. 

I still can't believe that i led with apology, I tried to heal the relationship and that in her altered personality (it's like talking to her wounded child) she could only see the wrong in everything i said and would say.  When i finally picked up the phone, she was back to my loving gf but i was still freaked out. 

I wish apologies mattered to those with BPD. 

[formflier]

It's likely that skipping apologies will actually improve things.  Since it seems obvious they aren't healing... .they seem to be triggering demands for more.

What do you think you will do differently next time?

FF

[truthbeknown]

FF:

the only thing about skipping apologies is that then I feel like it portrays me as someone cold and unresponsive.  I usually just say "I apologize for my part" but this time it wasn't good enough. 

This morning we actually talked about her encounter with her boss and she said her boss said sorry for getting her mad (see i'm not the only one that tip toes around her) and I said, "what did your boss apologize for?"  and she said "I hate you" which she really says like a little kid when she knows I brought awareness to a subject.  Because in our breakdown a couple of days ago she wanted me to have an itemized list of what I was sorry for.   

Going forward, I will put an end to the conversation sooner.  The only thing is that I had another relationship a few years ago where this same dynamic played out and if I had stronger bounderies then I was framed as the "avoidant".   Currently all of my gf's past boyfriends were "avoidants" and I'm beginning to see why. 

[formflier]

  I usually just say "I apologize for my part" but this time it wasn't good enough. 

So... .I think you should do some thinking about what makes a good apology.

"I apologize for my part" seems sort of "fill in the blank" to me. 

Usually a good apology has a description of what you did, what you should have done... .how it affected the other person... .and that you want to make it as right as possible.

Breaking things down into "parts" seems like a lawyers settlement conference where responsibility for an accident is split up.

Saying this another way... .I'm not surprised it didn't work with your wife. 

Two thoughts.

1.  Work on better apologies.
2.  Realize that apologies may be "feeding the monster" and making her worse. (by feeding a victim narrative)

Thoughts?

FF

[truthbeknown]

The reason for the apologizing for "my part" came from a workshop on co-dependency and the whole Idea was/is to not take responsibility for the whole argument.  A lot of co-dependents are quick to apologize just to appease their partner and then the other partner feels like they are off the hook for what they contributed.  The challenge here is a person's thinking type or operating style.  Some people are wired more for literal expressions of words and some people think more conceptually.  Just like the introvert and extrovert style contradictions it's possible that this comes into play here too.

Esther Perel speaks about this as well.  Matter vs form.   And that some partners hold the other hostage over what they did wrong when it's essentially avoiding the essence of what is going on.  One of her books is called "the state of affairs".   


What really came up is that her mom never apologizes for anything (suspected npd) and so when she gets in conflict with me it's almost as if she is fighting her mom and not me.   She has admitted to being aware of this.   
But i can also see your point that it depends on what really happened.  In a case where i was clearly out of bounds i will admit to this and say this.  I don't know how to apologize for distortions that my partner has.   I feel like you say in number 2 that this will feed the distortion monster if i admit to a crime that i didn't commit.   
To use your legal example, am i to take the plea just to come down the beast in her?  i might serve less time but then i'm admitting to a crime that i didn't commit.   I guess it's a balancing act and i'm trying to to the best i can with it.  I want to maintain some of my own self esteem too.   

[Enabler]

The obvious response to ‘my part’ is, “what was your part?”

Then you’re in JADE hell.

Also, it’s gpod to remember saying normal things to her which she may be hurt by, even if you know she might be hurt but they are necessary, doesn’t mean you have something to apologise for. The truth hurts... .it hurts some people A LOT.

[formflier]

So... .I've never been to a codependent workshop or listened to the lesson that you learned.

Did they want you to "understand" that you only "own" your part... .or did they actually want you to use the words "I apologize for my part".

Or... were they not clear.

So... ."treating" or "dealing with" codependency and BPD are likely different animals. 

I'm sure that apologizing for stuff that isn't yours is BAD and will MAKE BPDISH STUFF WORSE.  I'm sure... .

Why should you figure out how to apologize for her distortions?  Seriously... why?

Did you apologize for the flying monkeys in the wizard of oz?  Seriously... answer that?

How are they related?

FF

[snappybrowneyes]

FF,

My understanding of repentance is: Not only are you sorry for your sin but you make a conscious effort to never repeat that sin. I also believe you can have forgiveness without reconciliation. Trying to explain this to a pwBPD is difficult. I believe some operate with the mindset that "It is better to ask for forgiveness than permission."

I did not get a chance to read everyone's responses but I look forward to doing that. Great discussion!

[Turkish]

We used to say here,  "validate the valid, invalidate the invalid."

My ex used to demand apologies from me,  and I'd reply,  "who are you to demand an apology?" That was my dysfunctional response given she hurting me almost weekly.  My missing the mark is that I lacked the tools to tell her how she hurt me (I hurt her... .kind of true, I hurt the kids if a baby cried... .100% her distorted anxiety).

Jesus asked his Father to forgive those who crucified him.   They didn't know. Stephen asked God to forgive those who stoned him to death. They knew.  He still asked God to forgive them, to not hold their sin against them.  Both knew they were going to die, though resurrected.  Those are hard acts to follow,  to say the least.  

So what are we that aren't being martyred left with?