Forgive him?…
Never. He betrayed me in a way that I couldn’t walk away from. If he had had an affair or stole my identity it would be something that he did to me. But this, what he said, it’s like he reached inside of me and changed who I am! Furthermore, it changed who I am when I am with him.
Twenty years ago, the idea that he had the power to change what I thought of myself made perfect sense. At that time, he was more important to me than I was to myself.
But now, after all the work I’ve put into breaking down my dysfunctional beliefs about relationships and about myself, it doesn’t make any sense for me to still have an occasional delusional moment, does it? I can’t be both stagnant and evolved, can I?
Yes. That is what it means to be human: it’s a journey where time is interchangeable. We learn, we grow, we falter. And then we do it again.
And it’s even clearer to me now that I truly love him, being in this new grounded and objective space. I can see that he possesses more good qualities than not.
And just so you know reader there is more to this story. He made a lot of mistakes in our marriage. Said many things to hurt me. And done many things that justify my leaving. Yet somehow, I could forgive him for every hurtful thing he has said and done to me in our marital past. Except those words.
I Would Have to Decide
But why should I let him off the hook? Forgiveness is for me, they say. Yet, he would surely reap the benefits. If I was no longer holding on to the pain that I believed that he had caused, he would then feel the full capacity of my love. Right?
And forgiveness wouldn’t make him feel any better because at that point in time he didn’t feel as if he had done or said anything to be forgiven for.
The ironic thing was that through all the years of processing and recycling my anger and resentment he was happy with himself, his life, with me, and our marriage. I held on to the negativity so passionately because I wanted him to feel a little bit of what I felt. But the truth was I was the only one who was unhappy.
It was like that scene in Disney’s Beauty and The Beast where Philippe, Belle’s horse, comes to a fork in the road and has to choose between a serene, sun shining, birds chirping path to the right or a dark and foreboding path to the left. I feel like I chose to be living in the dark, alone, fearful and lost. While he chose to be in the light and happy!
I would have to decide. If I couldn’t love myself while I was with him, I would have to move on. If I decided to stay, the only way I could focus on learning to love myself was to forgive him.
Just like I was living alone with my anger and bitterness, I decided that I could forgive him in my heart without telling him. The results were immediate. He knew something was different in me even though he couldn’t verbalize it. All things him no longer monopolized my life from one moment to the next. It was simply me choosing me more often.
Keep in mind that this is ten plus years in the making. Feelings of resentment and betrayal take time to work through. Not to mention that it’s hard to understand and re-wire the hard wiring that goes on when you are learning about relationships from those around you during your formative years.
A Hard Thing to Do
I looked at it like this. If we divorced or worse, if he died, I would be left…with me. Did I like me? Did I know myself well enough? Could I trust my judgment enough to choose a suitable partner in the aftermath of this would be devastation?
It’s a hard thing to do, look at yourself.
In my self-evaluation and my daily practice of forgiving myself for my own mistakes and faults, self-compassion eventually came. That helped me to realize that he was human too. And I began to feel compassion for him as well.
Whether I decided to stay with him or not, forgiveness was the only way to go to grow and learn. Forgiveness is kind of like Karma: what you give you will receive. Not necessarily from the person you have forgiven, but I believe, from the Universe.
When I truly forgave him in my heart, I was no longer hurting. Forgiveness was for me. “They” were right.
Because, what you hold on to, you must take with you.
“Forgiveness is not surrender. It is a conscious decision to cease to harbor resentment.”
Women who run with Wolves
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