Forgiveness

"Please forgive me. I need you to forgive me."

These words were spoken in a recent couples session. One where one of the parties had had an affair, and the other was still working on trusting again. The one who has been cheated on was really having a hard time being able to say that she forgave

her husband.

I decided to take an approach of asking each of them what forgiveness meant to them. The wife said that she felt that forgiveness meant letting him off the hook. That it meant saying what he did was OK, and that we would never talk about it again. She wasn't ready to make that step. This version of forgiveness is one that I hear a lot. People think that it means saying "What you did was OK. Let's just forget about it" and that is really really hard to do!

The husband's version was different. To him it meant that she was saying she saw that he made a mistake, and she was choosing to not hold it against him anymore. That it didn't mean he was no longer accountable, or no longer had to work at rebuilding their marriage. But that it meant she accepted him as an imperfect person, and loved him despite that.

This discussion seemed very helpful for them. It really shows how subjective forgiveness can be. And that it really doesn't have to be about whose definition is right or wrong. My definition (for what it's worht) is somewhere in the middle-- forgiveness does not mean saying that it doesn't matter, or hurt or that we can't talk about it anymore. Heck, an affair is something that could come up in a conversation 20 years down the road! And it certainly doesn't mean that it's OK to go do it again. It means choosing to not let the hurt have so much power over you. That you notice that it takes up less of your energy. The intensity of the hurt is less. And it does mean accepting that we are imperfect, and that has to be OK.

If you are in a relationship where hurtful things have happened, and that the people involved believe forgiveness is important (and not everyone does. I myself am on the fence about this.) make sure to get a definition of what that even means to them. Don't assume that you know, because it could slow down the healing process.