Do you forgive people who f*** you over and don't come within a mile of remorse or an apology?

but it is theirs to do. i can take it personally, then that would put me in a position to forgive. i dont take it personally. i may think less of them, may not respect them or not want to be around them, but there is nothing to forgive, because i did not take anything on myself.

...I know it sounds like "Psych 101," but it's true. People get under our skin when we allow them to get under our skin.

And it's SO EASY to take the bait.

...because I've known people who have inflicted massive damage and for some reason...as simple as ignorance, perhaps...they didn't realize what they were doing at the time.

Then there are others who knew exactly what they were doing.

Obviously a lot of variables involved.

...my facebook status a couple weeks ago:

“Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.” - Sara Paddison

I can take a lot of crap and give a lot of chances, let things roll off if there is a chance it was a mistake or misunderstanding. But if somebody intentionally fucks me over? I won't forget.

If someone does me wrong enough to cause me to cut them out of my life, there is not much reason to let them back in, unless there has been some major life change in them. I thing people who forgive too easily are nuts. Why keep allowing people to get close to you if they are just going to make you regret it? Much more wise to just hold that grudge. Of course, with that being said, there is a high threshold for me to get to that point as well.

"She carried grudges until they died of old age, then had them stuffed and mounted."

but there are a very few people that screwed me over so badly I have not been able to get past it though I have tried. Mostly though I am as you indicated, willing to give chances because I know I certainly am not perfect and I don't expect others to be either.

I know that the world is built on giving people a shot at redemption, a "second chance," and that's OK...I just don't feel the need to give people a second chance with me, personally. I can forgive and let go and the operative word here is "go"...no matter what kind of Pollyanna mindset human beings might like to have, there are some people in the world who are just plain bad. There's no "all-encompassing rule," but people who intentionally do really rotten things, without remorse, are being fueled by an inner sense of self-loathing that usually far outweighs the severity of their actions.

And my reaction to that is "That's a shame. Get help. And stay the hell away from me."

No reason to waste any energy communicating, thinking, forgiving people who aren't worth the effort.

I'm a "forgiveness" type of guy but so I get the "forgiveness" overwith immediately and move on past it cutting them out of my life.

I won't hold a grudge, however, against someone who pushed me down in the sandbox when we were 4 years old, and never apologized.

But otherwise, yes, I believe forgiveness demands contrition.

Over the years I have discovered that I don't have to actually interact with someone or get their apology or feel their remorse to forgive them; and often, with some work, I find I can eventually let go of whatever emotional pain or hurt feelings I may have. I have learned that there is no profit in holding on to the bad stuff, since there is already so much of it trying to take hold from too many directions as it is.

Letting go may not be the same as forgiveness, but it can eventually turn into forgiveness, if I put a little thought into it and take some responsibility. It's a much better feeling than hanging on to angry, vengeful feelings, just not as easy.


:hi:

Why let any anger or pain fester in your heart and mind? Holding onto it just gives the person who wronged you even more power.

It necessarily doesn't mean that you allow that person back in your life, but you let it go and move on.

I've had people in my life do some seriously fucked up things to me. If I had let it fester, it would have destroyed me long ago. They controlled that moment, but I have the power to control the future and I have forgiven them to open those doors.

...it's what my mother used to say all the time: You don't do it for them, you do it for you. It's hard to get one's arms around that in the moment the wrong is being done, but the sooner we let it go, the sooner it's gone and we can give our full attention to what really matters.

Two monks were traveling together, an older monk and a younger monk. They noticed a young woman at the edge of a stream, afraid to cross. The older monk picked her up, carried her across the stream and put her down safely on the other side. The younger monk was astonished, but he didn't say anything until their journey was over. "Why did you carry that woman across the stream? Monks aren't supposed to touch any member of the opposite sex." said the younger monk. The older monk replied "I left her at the edge of the river, are you still carrying her?"

A version of which is used in many cultures - Jewish and Amish among them

Too true in practice.

(Our Quaker Meeting is hosting workshops on forgiveness this month and last, and I've been looking for appropriate quotes for the newsletter)

Forgiveness is the way of the one who was hurt to let go of the pain and hurt.

I find it funny when someone is hurt from someone else, and feels so self-righteous and indignant about it that they proclaim "I will never forgive that person!" as though 'that person' is somehow going to be hurt by it. 'That person' doesn't give a shit - that's why they caused the pain to begin with. They win as long as the hurt person holds on to that pain and lets it drive their life.

My nephew died on Feb. 2. My brother was on the outs with one of his daughters, it took his son's and her brother's death for them to reconcile.

I decided that it was more important to live, laugh, love and forgive than to hold on to anger and try and justify it. Especially if it's someone you care for. And if it's someone that really doesn't mean anything to you..why waste time not forgiving, it's you that carries around the anger.

But that's just my opinion.

However that does not change that I am due beer and travel money.

For me, it doesn't have much to do with whether or not they apologize. There are a (very) few people out there who are thoroughly despicable, and I absolutely enjoy loathing them ... and will enjoy loathing them forever.
There are others who are simply really sad characters who can't help themselves, who've been stupid or gormless or whatever. Why shouldn't I forgive them? Why would I waste energy being unforgiving.

it just means they will do it again, given the right circumstances

...if we choose to forgive, to somehow not provide an opportunity for people to do the same thing again in the future.

I have and acquaintance who is an alcoholic...it would be a real stretch to call him a "friend," because we simply have mutual acquaintances, and to be honest, I don;t really like this guy at all...who claims he has been sober for 17 years...but exhibits all the signs of "dry drunk" behavior. One little thing will set him off and he'll fly into a rage. He is always referencing AA and quoting their "principles" but when you witness his behavior you wonder if any of that helps. For some, I guess it does. For others, attending AA meetings becomes just one more form of addiction. I don't mean to minimize what the group accomplishes...I'm just saying that in my personal experience, whenever I have met someone in AA and gotten to known them for any length of time, I hear a lot of "AA-speak" but can see them still dragging all of their baggage along on the journey. The fact that they may or may not be actively drinking doesn't necessarily mean that they have been "healed." And if a person finds themselves in the crosshairs of someone like that, and they find themselves wronged, there is an excellent chance that being in that person's orbit in the future will increase the likelihood of a repeat performance.

but I had a young kid and to me that was more important. Oddly enough, even though he never apologized we ended up being friends and I can really count on him.

Am I consumed by hate and anger for people who fuck me over? Not really. My feelings for those (few) people range from apathy to contempt, and only then if the topic of their fucking me over comes up somehow. But I don't sit and seethe over how much I hate them and let it interfere with my life.

However, I have absolutely no intention of ever having any kind of contact with those people ever again. They showed their true colors to me, and it would be absolutely idiocy and/or lunacy to allow them back into my life, knowing what I know. I don't see the point of "forgiving" sociopaths. They are going to pursue their nasty little agendas no matter what, and the farther away from me they pursue them, the better. But I don't waste any time or emotion dwelling on the fact that they fucked me over, either. It's over, I learned a valuable lesson about a very not nice person, and now have the resources to better avoid similar people in the future. So I'm not sure where that falls on your spectrum, but that's how I feel.

but not anymore. No more Ms. Nice Lady.

when I see other people slighted or mistreated.

I had several friends fuck me over when I was a kid. I was quite hurt by these things but I don't think they realized what they did. Or if they had a clue at the time, they've probably forgotten all about it now because it wasn't a big deal to them. Some of them came back into my life in some way, and I've always been nice to them but I have never forgotten what they did and because of this I don't think very highly of them. Even if/when they are in my life, I don't let them that close. Part of me wants to say something to them about what they did to me and how terrible it was, but I feel like I'll end up looking like the smaller person who can't get past an old thing. Being nice to people is in my nature, but sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who could just cut them out of my life.

what happened--i try to learn from my lessons.

a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry" - Chuang-Tzu

When people hurt us by carelessly not paying attention, they ride boats with no one in control: anyone, who is aware, steers the boat. And when people hurt us by losing control, they are carried downstream in boats through terrible floods: no one, who is aware, puts a craft into a raging current where it is tossed back and forth. And when people hurt us deliberately, they steer like mad helmsmen: who else would give no thought to crashing the craft and drowning? Feel compassion for them all: wake the drowsing, rescue them caught in the floods ...

...it was back in the early 90s, when I was taking a 12-week sales & management class at the company I worked for at the time. The trainer encouraged us to read the books of Dr. Robert Anthony, and I did...in one of them he wrote that everyone around us, as well as ourselves, is "operating at their own current level of awareness."

Which is, to say, that some people are "steering like mad helmsmen"...their level of awareness not only doesn't reach out to others, they are probably the least self-aware among us.

I think many times people hurt and instinctively look for someone else to hurt in order to make themselves feel better. The problem is that hurt is like a fatal illness, unless the affected cells are cut from the body along with sufficient healthy surrounding tissue, it will grow and overtake it and the end will be near.

I have a friend-slash-mentor who constantly encourages me to "take the high road." It is a challenge because we live in a world that includes people who don't know, people who don't care, and people who are a combination of both. And sometimes those people reveal their presence by their actions, and we need to keep our "craft in control," because the "raging current" isn't a person or event, it's life, and it's active 24/7...so the more time we spend reacting to those who would hurt us, intentionally or ignorantly, the less time we focus on navigating our own craft through thise waters.

Excellent thoughts...thank you for posting.

"because it's the right thing"...I don't believe in that bullshit. I just enjoy my life and they can rot in hell ;)


mark

And giving it to people who don't deserve it is not self respecting and damaging to my self esteem, my own knowledge of my right to be treated well.

I strive for acceptance. As in, "I accept that the fucker over is fucked up and it's not my responsibility to fix or 'forgive' them." This frees me from stress over whether *I* did something wrong by not forgiving a sociopath.

I like this. Sometimes these conversations are reduced to a simplistic duality: a) forgive someone who wronged you or b) be consumed by hate forever. I reject both, at least, when it comes to the traditional meaning of "forgiveness." One of the most valuable lessons we can learn is how to avoid toxic people, and false notions of "being the better person" by forgiving and forgetting toxic behavior actively inhibit that response.

if it is my neighbor or my family, i try to toss it off. if it is someone i don't usually see around, i might not go to the trouble.
usually if really feel like i am owed an apology, i will take it up with the person, and try to do it in a way that will get one. sometimes that means opening up a disagreement again, but...

..."How do you forgive someone you don't want to forgive?"

Without hesitating, he said "time and distance."

He apparently went through that with an uncle, and got the time and distance he needed, and ultimately forgave him.

I hear what you're saying about friends and family...one more thing I'd add to that is "extended family," because I have friends and associates who have become closer to me over the years than many blood relatives I could name. And when something happens in THAT orbit, it's really awkward. It's like that scene in "Goodfellas" where Paul Sorvino and Robert DeNiro go to the apartment of Ray Liotta's "goomar" and Sorvino tells him "You're going to end this, and you're going back to your wife." You then have the choice of saying "no," which creates a further rift in the "group dynamic," or restoring peace by taking a deep breath and doing something you may not want to do or are not ready to do.

No "easy" answers for any of this stuff. I'm really grateful for all of the responses so far...they are really covering the spectrum.

The more I learn about why someone took an undesirable action, the less I'm able to hold a grudge.

But the usual conservative sell-us-out-for-money? Forgiveness for that ought to be earned.

Key word there being "try". Sometimes that is easier said then done.

However, I always do try, and not because I'm attempting to claim some kind of moral high ground. No, my motives are far more selfish then that. ;-)

I've just found that life is too short to let someone's else's actions poison my thoughts w/bitterness. I've wasted far too much of my life being bitter, but in recent years have come to the conclusion that bitterness hurts me much more then anyone else.

Forgiveness, if one can achieve it, lifts a huge burden imho. :-)

It was very liberating to me to learn that.

I think if they hurt you, and if you don't want to let them back in your life, that is perfectly OK.

Even if the person is a blood relative. Do what you have to do to take care of yourself.

but if 'forgive' means 'like or trust them again', then no, not under those circumstances.

I agree with what many have said here...forgiveness in the form of our "letting go" of someone who has wronged us increases our own freedom, but I personally don;t think we should ever "forgive" someone and leave the door open for them to come back and hurt us whenever and however they choose.

I keep thinking about the story of the frog and the scorpion, and how after he stings the frog he basically says "Hey, I'm a scorpion. I sting things."

Some people are like that and you can't let them sting you twice.

just wow.

Knows that I'm happy with someone else now. She is living a miserable, lonely, pathetic existence after completely fucking me over last summer. Every couple of months, I'm getting emails telling me that she made a terrible mistake, and she still "loves" me, and we are soul-mates. Yet, she never seems to be able to apologize directly to my face. I find it very difficult to "forgive" her for what she did to me. As more time goes by, I'm not sure how much I even care anymore...

...started sleeping with the ex-boyfriend again. She'd come home around 10 or 11 at night, slip into bed without saying a word, and at the time, I was in no mood to speak to her either.

The guy was bad news...a coke dealer, who had once robbed a home and had her hold onto the stuff. Why the hell she felt the need to go back to this waste of DNA I don;t know, but the heart wants what the heart wants...I guess.

One of the very few things I can't forgive is sleeping with someone else when you're in a committed relationship. After she finally moved out, she decided that she wanted to come back to the house and "explain." She did, and I decided not to answer the door. She told mutual friends about this (the couple who originally introduced us) and I replied "Tell her that, in my mind, she went into the hospital for emergency surgery and never came out."

She tells me that they aren't sleeping together and they don't have a relationship to speak of. She left with no job, and no money, and he took her in only to provide a roof over her head and nothing else. Hmmm, last time I looked I didn't see "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead. Maybe I'd better look again. She claimed that she doesn't want a man in her life who would even touch alcohol, yet she went running back to one of the biggest drunks in Mansfield OH. I gave her a beautiful little house, and she went to live in a single-wide trailer. 6 months later, she's still staying there. You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you'll never take the trailer park out of the girl...

If we all forgive everyone unconditionally, we'd all be Jesus.

If people intentionally fuck me over, I will never forgive them.

to earn it back.

because otherwise I will just ruminate on whatever upset me and I just want to move on and let go. I don't like carrying around the extra emotional weight.

If there is a betrayal of trust involved, trust being a very fragile commodity, no. Not no, but hell no.

If there was no trust involved, possibly. Given time (lots of time) and distance.

the "Don't get Mad Just get Even" adage.

Don't forgive, don't forget, and look for a chance to fuck them over in return.

It's about how much bitterness you feel the need to hang onto in your life. I don't feel the need to hang onto much in the way of anger or bitterness, but if a person is going to work long enough and hard enough... I can make exceptions.

because of the number of vindictive, vengeful idiotic ideas that forgiveness is somehow about offering yourself up for another sacrifice, or that it somehow is saying to the person "What you did is soooooo awesome, I want you to do it again!"

It's a constant disappointment that so-called liberals have so much hate and anger in them that they'd rather spend their lives boiling with unquenched rage and vindictive hate at some wrong than just let it go and get on with life.

This is precisely why you are one of the best DUers ever.

the answers to this poll are amazing and sad.

There! Are you happy now?

Can we just drop this? PLEASE?

after decades of emotional abuse and retaliation...I decided the behavior had overdrawn and bankrupted my emotional bank account. No amount of forgiveness would change the behavior. I distanced myself from the individual.

but remember

and therefore I can forgive anything except a violation of that trust. There are 3 people whom I will never forgive, for reasons I will never forget. Each one is responsible for fucking me over in jaw-dropping ways, and while I have never received anything remotely like an apology or a peace offering, I doubt I would accept such things if they were given.

So I guess the short answer is "no."

Call it karma or whatever you want to, but there is no positive return in dragging around ill will for too long.

Get pissed if you feel the need to, then move ON!



Laura

Not saying this is a good thing to do, but it is what I do.
I'd kinda like to be a forgiving type of person, but I'm not.

show any remorse/apologize for what she did. We both did some foolish things, and I've apologized to her for my mistakes. Next month will be 11 years since we separated, and there's absolutely zero remorse/regret/etc. from her.

You can forgive, but not forget....

You need to be aware of the situation, in the same way that you wouldn't sit in a chair that had a broken leg, you don't place any weight on a bad person. They exist whether you will it or no. Sometimes the are in the way, others they can actually be useful when used with care. They are broken, you cant fix it, all you can do is exist in your own self. There's nothing to forgive, in my understanding of things.

"I have forgiven my parents for what they did, the same way a bank forgive a bad loan cuz it's just too much trouble to chase it down. I have not absolved them, they are responsible for what they did and have to deal with the consequences. But that's where it ends. My life is all about _today_ and what I can do to make it better."