FWN

FeelingGreat

If you find a way, let me know.

I don't think I'm a huge grudge holder, but I do have trouble with people who don't feel sorry for their actions. Not that I go out and abuse them, but I can't honestly forgive either to the extent of resuming a normal relationship with them.

My parents drank a fair bit when I was a teen, and it made my sisters and me quite unhappy because Mum would get quite nasty and not just for the duration of being drunk. We spoke to them about it, but to no avail. Otherwise they were pretty good parents.

Looking back as an adult I still think they dropped the ball for that period of their life. I've not thought of it in terms of forgiving them; it is what it is, it caused damage but so much time has gone by that other events have overtaken them.

Maybe this isn't the time to work hard on forgiveness, as you still have an ongoing situation. For instance you could forgive your AH his past actions, only to have him repeat them. Maybe understanding why would be more productive, without letting your understanding get in the way of doing what you need to do to secure a calm life for yourself and the kids.

Hawkeye13

I was only able to truly forgive my alcoholic mother when I was no longer being manipulated by her or cleaning up her messes.

While in engagement with her it was impossible for me as she really never gave up her childish and selfish dynamic which put me in the manager “enforcer” role which I resented deeply. The detachment tool was only a short term triage for me as it was inauthentic to my real feelings of anger, hurt, and sadness.

SparkleKitty

Forgiveness came when I accepted that other people were doing the best they could, under their own circumstances, which I didn't and couldn't understand, and when I was able to stop subjecting myself to the consequences of their behaviors and choices.

I realized that my expectations that other people were always going to be and behave in ways that made me comfortable were unreasonable. And when I educated myself about addiction, I was able to stop taking their behavior personally, which helped a lot.

LifeRecovery

This recovery experience has taught me that I tend to "forgive" to easily and it is actually a way of how I express my co-dependent behaviors. I try to "forgive" and throw it under the rug.

With the person that helped get me here I have not fully forgiven him yet, and it has been ten years. I have actively disengaged and disconnected which has helped. This helped me to determine what was mine in our interactions. It also has given me the space to turn him over to his higher power, which is not my higher power.

I now have had the time and space to appreciate the lessons this experience has taught me. The lessons have been painful, but the learning invaluable.

Finally I gave myself permission to not forgive him......it is odd but this freedom really helped me to not see it as an obligation. I read a great book called "How Do I Forgive You, and the Freedom Not To," by Janis Abrahm Spring which is about affairs but it has given me the room to work toward forgiveness without having a strict timeline or without adding guilt and shame to myself for NOT being able to do something quickly and easily when it honestly hurt.

I would say I am 75%+ there on this forgiveness journey, and grateful for this chance to do it differently.

dandylion

I think that LifeRecovery makes a very important point that could easily be missed by most people.....especially with the great popularity of "forgiveness" in the popular media....that it is something that one must rush toward and it must be done Now!

nez

Forgiveness doesn’t excuse behavior. Forgiveness prevents behavior from destroying your heart.

hopeful4

I personally was not able to move forward and forgive until I had two things. One, a lot of therapy. Two, when I got away from the situation so his actions were not affecting me so much. It's REALLY hard to forgive someone when you don't understand why they are doing what they are doing. To watch them basically crash and burn and not give the effort to save themselves.

So, I had to come to realize a couple of things. One, that my XAH was not deliberately drinking to pi$$ me off, which is how it felt a lot of the time. That drinking to him is as necessary as air, and it always will be. Two I realized that being ticked off all the time was affecting me and my children.....MORE THAN HIS DRINKING. That's right. My children were more affected by how I was acting in reaction to him than the fallout of his drinking. It was that bad. I was miserable. I had to come to realize that if I kept all that focus on him, that I was going to cause myself some really bad physical ailments, and likely a nervous breakdown. My kids need me. I need to be me, the real authentic me, not the ticked off me.

I have had time to step away from it and have made a decision in my head that I will not let myself be changed by who he is. Ever again. For me that meant divorce. For many others that means something else. I still get mad when he does things that affect my kids. However, they have also had therapy and have come to understand the same things I do and it does not affect them nearly as much as it did say two years ago.

I may be rambling, and if so I am sorry. This was a big accomplishment for me, and one that took ALOT of work, but it was so very worth it.

SmallButMighty

FWN, I think forgiveness, like the rest of the healing process(es), takes time.

There is no quick fix that I know of. I'm not sure it's even possible to forgive when feelings are still raw and/or anger is still hot.

I've had to forgive many people in my 48 years. Most of that forgiveness has come into my heart the last five years or so. Most of those people I have forgiven are not even in my life any more. I gave myself permission to love people, even people who had wronged me and whom I never wanted to see again. Allowing myself to feel that love brought forgiveness. I can love people from a distance. I don't have to be involved in their lives to know I love them and want the best for them.

I have a lot more empathy for people than I used to. I was so angry for so long at some of the things some people did to me that I could not forgive them. Learning about addiction and personality disorders and then choosing not to allow people active in those types of dysfunctions into my life gave me the space I needed to release the anger, replace it with love, and with that came the forgiveness.

As one example, I don't trust my alcoholic exhusband, I don't even like him anymore, but I do have love in my heart for him. I have forgiven him for all the wrongs over all the years. I have empathy for his situation and feel I understand why he is the way he is and why he does the things he does... he is a sick man who was raised by sick parents, he hasn't (yet) broken that toxic, dysfunctional cycle. Forgiving him doesn't mean I have given him a "pass". I certainly have not FORGOTTEN the hell we went through...but I haven't forgotten the good times either. He and I can't even be in the same room together at this moment in time, but I feel a whole lot better now that I don't carry the burden of fury and pain that was present before I forgave him.

I don't know if any of this will be any help to you, but it is how forgiveness has played out for me. It took much longer than I wanted it to to get to this point...

ironwill

Forgiveness comes hard with an active alcoholic. It's a bit easier with a recovering alcoholic. When I looked at the hurt my RAW cause me, I had to say to myself that I didn't cause this. The Alcohol changed her. It's what cause her to drink more, to manipulate me, to lie and cheat on me. It took me a while to realize that it was the alcohol and not me.

I also heard a couple phrases that also made it easier to forgive her. The first one is "Let Go and Let God". This allowed me to not be the judge of her or my self and let my higher power deal with it. If I kept thinking about it, it was just getting me in a loop of forgive and then not forgive. The second phrase I saw from one of the members here (Hopeful4). "I never knew how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry, and accept an apology I never received". I still have not received an apology for all the things my RAW has done. Just an admittance of what she had done and that she won't do it again. I have forgiven her of what she did and trust as long as she is working her program and doing her steps that it won't happen again.

Grant it I still have days that something will trigger me to think of what she did to me and I want to know why. But then I just say to my self to "Let Go and Let God" and it passes quickly. So the memory will always be with you, but it will easier to get pass it.

flower959

I'm following this thread, as I think forgiveness is something that I really struggle with as well. I tend to hold on to my "grudges" longer than necessary. I hate that word. Grudge. It's sounds so dirty, doesn't it?

I often ask myself "how can I move on from this?" and just struggle with actually doing it. It stays with me longer than what I think may be healthy. I'm thinking of the incident over & over again and allowing that anger to get the better of me. Who does that hurt? Only me. So, why would I continue to allow myself to be in that position?

Forgiveness is about giving yourself peace, & is not about the other person that you're trying to forgive.

This is extremely difficult to do with someone that does something and apologizes (whether it's sincere or not), then repeats the same behavior. That truly tells me that the person wasn't sorry to begin with.

nez

At times, I exhibit less than stellar behavior with people I love. It doesn't mean that I don't regret or feel sorry about my behavior. It just means that I am a flawed human being. I make what I am doing more important than my mental state, which is the complete opposite from I strive to do. I am a slow learner.

Derringer

The Fourth Step is ONE of our first action step towards PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL well-being.

a process to recreate our lives.

In Step 3, We made a decision to give up our old plans for living and to try Al Anons12 Step Plan for Living.

Step Four is a fact-finding and fact-facing process. We are searching for the "causes and conditions" of our unhappy results in life!

We want to uncover the truth about ourselves.

We want to discover the attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, fears, actions, behaviors, and the behavior patterns - that have been blocking us and causing us problems and causing our unhappiness.

We want to learn the exact nature our "character defects" and what causes us to do the unacceptable things we do - so that once they are removed - we can acquire and live with new attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, actions and behaviors for our HIGHEST good, and for the HIGHEST good of those with whom we come in contact.

Forgiveness of others comes easily and almost automatically, when we sweep off our side of the street.

Trust the process.

FallenAngelina

You are reading Chapter 11: Detachment, Love and Forgiveness.

While it's good to do a lot of reading and learning to educate yourself, the concepts you're reading about are in chapter 11 for a reason - they come much further down the line than where you are, having just begun your program. It's good to be familiarizing yourself with these concepts, but don't expect to be able to jump into detachment, love and forgiveness without much program experience. Forgiveness, especially, is something that even the most active members can take years to come to. There are many ways to unbind yourself from negative feelings right now without taking on the enormous concept of forgiveness. The chapters called Breaking Our Isolation and Becoming Aware (chapters 5 & 7) would likely be more beneficial for you to focus on right now.

Just my thoughts. As always, what's best is whatever resonates with you.

FWN

Thank you for your responses! I am actually only a handful of chapters into the book. I think I've just gone over the forgiveness overview, not an entire chapter on forgiveness. I'm reading this book very slowly, trying to take in the bits and pieces over a long period of time. And it's what I do before my kids get up so I have very little time to read it lol, but I like my routine with it right now.
Appreciate everyone's take on this subject, so interesting to hear everyone's experiences.

I'm going to take a break from SR for a bit. Sometimes I get bogged down here (not in a bad way, but it just keeps my mind on my AH instead of just living in the present). I'll be back with an update in a couple of weeks.

hopeful4

It's good to take breaks FWN. I know I absolutely had times that it kept me too focused on things other than myself.

Keep taking good care of you friend!

trailmix

Definition of forgive
transitive verb

1: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender) : PARDON
forgive one's enemies
2a: to give up resentment of or claim to requital (see REQUITAL sense 1) for
forgive an insult
b: to grant relief from payment of
forgive a debt
intransitive verb

: to grant forgiveness
had to learn to forgive and forget

I personally don't see forgiving and forgetting as intertwined, how do you forget that? I mean in our minds eventually have all the details go wherever they go and it may not be a big deal, or we re frame it, but I would never force myself or require myself to forget anything.

Now this:

1: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender)

That is within my power. I can choose to do this or not. I guess some people can just say - ok, i'll stop being resentful about that, for myself, I have to give myself reasons, not talking about someone short changing me at the corner store here lol - I have to reason it out, then I let it go.

Now I would call that, not feeling resentment anymore, but it is the transitive verb of forgiveness, so be it. Transitive seems appropriate here.

NYCDoglvr

For me the biggest tool to foster forgiveness is doing a 4th and 5th Step. It helps me see what MY part of the problem is and by doing so, let go of the other person. I suggest Alanon, a 12 Step program for people involved with alcoholics.

mylifeismine

My experience with forgiveness started with me.
I began to forgive myself and cultivate self compassion.
Forgiveness for others came later, but I agree that it is
unhealthy to expect to forgive someone who is in active
addiction and harming you.