I've labored toward an understanding that the primary purpose of forgiveness is NOT to restore relationship with the offender.
That is a lovely thing that can happen when a genuinely remorseful offender asks for forgiveness. How rare is that? But when that happens, of course there's hope for restoration.
But on a more practical level, an unchanged offender isn't someone you'd want ongoing relationship with, if you have committed to healing yourself. What gets healed, I think, is the chronic level of anger you still carry, which slowly poisons you from within.
The purpose of forgiveness is, to put it another way, to restore relationship with YOURSELF.
Your own peace, your own serenity, your own daily state of mind.
That doesn't mean it's easy. I can't do it sometimes. I did get there with my mother. My brother was so off-the-scale vicious that although I forgive him there is no present emotion attached to that. And I want no further contact with him for the rest of my life but I'm not angry. I think I forgave him because it's inescapable how broken and damaged he is. I feel some pity when I think of him. But he hardly ever crosses my mind. (Helps that he's in another state...but the break was so final that I just don't feel troubled about it. Done. A real DONE.)
But otherwise, I think what's interesting...is that the times when I've truly forgiven a damaging person in my life...I don't feel anything further toward them. Not a rush of love, or renewed affection, or even interest. I'm not wondering about them.
When it gets complicated is when I forgive but then realize I haven't really done that all the way...because of a yearning for a renewed relationship. If someone is THAT cruel ... then a healthy me would no longer have yearning. (Like I'm tricking myself into forgiving because that must be magical...and now it will be okay. Not.)
So I don't know exactly how it works, but I know the peaceable, completed forgiveness process...for me...actually DOES involve "forgetting." It's not that I can't remember the anguished feelings I experienced over Nmom. But honestly, once I forgave her (and, she died...which is a huge piece of it) -- I truly seldom think about her. Now and then I do, but without pain. But it does seem that forgiveness has helped me "forget" the hurt.
Two I am still working on are Nboss (fast fading into the rear-view mirror, but not there yet) and my daughter. Because my daughter is my daughter and I love her very much, that I forgive her completely is true, but it's also still attached to some degree of yearning. Interesting moment with my T the other day, though. I have struggled for years (including here) with the decision of whether or not to continue paying for her cell phone. I'd do it monthly and stand at the kiosk feeding in cash, and it hurt. This is the phone she never calls me on. Never, in four years. So it felt like harming myself, while I really did want to keep helping her.
When I lost my job in December, I just stopped. I could re-start but found myself asking my T what to do. (Because working as a babysitter or nanny in a poor state...she's surviving, but barely.) He didn't want to vote. But at the end of our session he had an insight that really helped me let it go. It wasn't directly about forgiveness but in a way, it fits.
He said, "Continue to pay it may be feeding into 'magical thinking'--that in some way this payment is keeping the relationship alive. When reality-thinking is that the truth is, there is no relationship now." And he was suggesting that FULLY accepting that as of now, I have no relationship whatsoever with her, and that it's over, is actually healthier for me. So stopping those payments is actually a good thing.
That doesn't mean that if she changes/heals and chooses to seek me out again one day, that a relationship couldn't happen then. But it would be a different one, and actually -- with a different person. The only relationship I have with her now is really in my own head, with memories. And reality-thinking is to recognize that this woman in her 30s is not the daughter I knew. And to pretend in any way that my forgiveness (or paying her cell phone) keeps that young daughter real...just isn't reality.
Whew. That's heavy. I read a lot on forums for estranged parents and the anguish can be endless. I think I've fought hard to decide NOT to live in anguish. I have a powerful desire to embrace reality, because I believe reality is my friend.
(That mantra, reality is my friend, was something that popped into my head years ago when I was trying to cure myself of obsessive and unreciprocated love...and after a bunch of one-way relationships, I had hit bottom and really DID know that I never wanted to be in that kind of relationship again. That the pain was never, ever worth the initial thrills. I think something like that is operating in me now about my daughter. Although I will still grieve periodically, I am trying to not let this loss define me.)
Thanks for the topic and sorry for the tangent!
Hops
