How do you forgive someone who isn't sorry they hurt you? Is it really that important to forgive?

[ElizaPickford]

I've just finished reading The Railway Man and it is ultimately a book about forgiveness. It got me thinking - forgiveness was obviously the right thing for the main character to do, no doubt made easier by the fact that the person he needed to forgive was desperately sorry and had spent much of his life trying to atone.

I'm not directly trying to relate my situation to the one portrayed in that book - however I've been struggling for a long time with the fact that I was betrayed by one of my parents and have been badly damaged on several levels by their actions to me throughout my life. I no longer have anything to do with them but I do think about them often and find myself struggling with the idea of forgiveness.

One one level, I would love to be free of all the feelings I still have of resentment for what has gone on and suspect I would be more at peace if I could forgive. However, I know that from a logical perspective that I don't know how to forgive. I can say that I do but ultimately I am still left sad and angry and forgiveness does not feel authentic. What makes it worse is that the person I feel I should forgive actively does not give one tiny shit about their behaviour - they think that they tried their best and "if that's not good enough then tough shit." There is no salvaging the relationship at all I don't think - I've tried but it is completely one way traffic and I'm not a masochist.

So the question is - is it possible? Has anyone done it? Or do I need to just reconcile myself to this feeling of sadness that underlies everything I do for the rest of my life? How important is forgiveness anyway - is it mentally safer to remember that whatever happens this person cannot be trusted and that even if they were sorry I need to keep my guard up?

Pleased with yourself capsium?

A shining example to us all of your christian behaviour.

Not especially combust. It's why I apologised. What else would you advise?

Stop thinking you have a higher degree of moral status than us heathens.
Being a christian does not increase your moral fibre, yet it's clear that you think it does.

I don't think that I have a 'higher degree of moral status' than anyone combust.

You could have fooled me.

Thanks for telling me.

Combust you're sounding bitter and twisted

capsium has been unfair to ride roughshod over itsfab and other's feelings but lacks the sensitivity to even understand what she has done. I am pointing out her folly as she seems even now unable to decipher things herself.

What's bitter about that? capsium is so wrapped up in dogma that she has become removed from being able to understand the human condition. To her forgiveness is a divine aspiration.
For some of us it is unnecessary and not something to strive for.

I agree with Combust.

The reality of life is that there are lots of people who don't care in the slightest how their behaviour impacts others. There are many who actively enjoy having power over others including the power to hurt them. To suggest that they are all suffering from some kind of sickness would equal the complete abdication of personal responsibility. You chose to do the wrong thing therefore your ability to make decisions must be damaged so you are incapable of true choice. A simplistic view.

Rubbish. You're harshly judging Capsium for what, judging? oh the irony.

So what if someone else has an alternative viewpoint to you? Oh wait, this is the real world where, yes you've guessed it, people all have their different opinions!

Getting back to the topic at hand; Eliza, the bottom line is that we all know people are capable of committing atrocities. What we do with that is up to us. To be in a place of forgiving them never rightly involves condoning the behaviour.

If those who suffered in the holocaust are able to forgive rape, beatings, theft, abandonment, starvation, cruelty, imprisonment, torture and death, then it must be possible.

But you don't know what they've had to put up with that's made them behave the way they do I covered this a little way down. My mum didn't have a great childhood, so she took that into her parenting of ME! She parented my siblings differently.

I had a crap childhood. You know what I did? I made a choice that my children would not have the childhood I had. I made a choice to treat them better than I was.

A choice my mother had.

So I don't buy the 'what they went though made them that way" because my childhood was worse then hers, yet I managed to change the cycle of abuse.

Atrcts "If those who suffered in the holocaust are able to forgive rape, beatings, theft, abandonment, starvation, cruelty, imprisonment, torture and death, then it must be possible."

No one is arguing thta it is possible, but whether it's necessary- remember the OP's question "Is it really that important to forgive?"

Some of us ( the ones who have been through harsh wrongdoing) are suggesting that it is not necessary, but we are being told - by it seems the christian fanatics- that we must forgive if we don't want to damage ourselves.

That's just crap, and what's more we are being judged for not forgiving our abusers too!!

Like a broken machine which causes it to malfunction dangerously.

A machine isn't like a person. It doesn't have feeling, thought, choice.

Everyone has a choice. I made the choice not to be my mother, parent like her or treat others like she did.

I think I am pretty nice human being. I have been a wife for 20 odd years now (all 3 of her husbands left her) I am quite sure my eldest dd doesn't hate living with me, like I did when I lived at home, pretty sure neither of them feel deprived of love & attention. My friends also think I am pretty awesome!

That is because I made a choice the same one she had.

Do you think people can be completely mentally healthy and commit terrible crimes against others? yes, I do. As previously said, my mother treated me very differently to my siblings.

Thing is, capsium if all offenders were unstable/had mental illness etc, there would be no prisons, because they would all be in mental institutions.

Also, my friend has depression, quite severe anti & post natal. She managed to not hurt anyone.

So to imply that all those who hurt us are not mentally stable, suggests that anyone not mentally stable is an abuser. Which is a huge injustice to anyone who suffers with depressions etc.

What else would you advise? Back off, Like I asked? All though this thread you have pushed & pushed & asked people to justify, argued that we cannot move on/feel free etc unless we forgive.

You have pushed on with your questioning in a bid to 'understand,' you objected & justified when your beliefs were questioned.

Yet all you have done is question our beliefs & expressed utter disbelief for them, do you not see the irony here?

If your posts weren't written to carefully, they could be seen as goady!

So what if someone else has an alternative viewpoint to you? Oh so true. But yet this is what capsicum has over looked here, no one else! She is the only one lately who has refused to see that OUR differing opinion. She has been the one who refused to see that not everyone is mentally altered who commits crimes.

Do YOU see the irony there?

If those who suffered in the holocaust are able to forgive rape, beatings, theft, abandonment, starvation, cruelty, imprisonment, torture and death

Are they? Evidence?

And what, just because A forgives B, we should all forgive? Isn't that taking away our freedom?

"If those who suffered in the holocaust are able to forgive rape, beatings, theft, abandonment, starvation, cruelty, imprisonment, torture and death, then it must be possible."

Anad again- judgement. Passive agression.

If holocaust victims can forgive then why won't we?

Atrcts - people are not judging Capsium for judging, we are trying to point out to her how her actions are hurting people. Us pointing out to her where we feel she is being unfair are trying to help and to stop more upset. If our pointing it out is upsetting her that is one person upset but for the right reason and no way could it be as upsetting as her banging on about how abusers need to be forgiven because they can't help themselves and must be ill.

Capsium, i know you mean well, but your views and approach are so utterly naive. You ask - how can people cope if they believe people CHOOSE to do these acts, and haven't done it because they are so flawed and damaged that they essentially have little choice? (Paraphrasing)

Your view is so utterly and totally naive. You have created an explanation that makes YOU feel better and able to understand the world. You think because people aren't like you, they are flawed - because the NORM is that people wouldn't want to hurt others. Some people DO want to hurt others. Most psychologists in the world accept that some people are just evil, there is no other explanation for it. They enjoy hurting others, or put themselves so far ahead of others that others' pain is irrelevant. If you find that view hard to 'live with and cope with' - tough!

Previously i linked to the website 'Healing of Memories' - and Fr Michael Lapsley.

He is a victim of a letter bomb, purely as revenge while apartheid was collapsing. He runs reconciliation workshops around the world.

I know him personally, and he has stayed with us several times.

He would NEVER endorse such a naive, simplistic view of forgiveness and reconciliation. He just wouldn't.

Well said FrootLoopy