Can people who hurt you in the past suddenly become good people? Should you forgive?

I was horribly abused by my family of origin for 33.5 years!

I shall not have contact with them!

I will not forgive them!

I absolutely refuse to even attempt to make excuses for all the evil @#$%! they did to me!

I will not betray myself nor my wounded inner child like that ever again!

Well, perhaps I may have exaggerated some things...I don't know whether I did or not, but I may have given the impression here that things were worse than they actually were...I don't know.

What I do know is that these are my parents, who cut the tags out of all my shirts when I was little because I was super sensitive to rough fabrics, who read to me every night, who took me out for ice cream and bought me a toy from the hospital gift shop whenever I had to have a needle, who would come in to check on me a few hours after they thought I'd gone to sleep every night just to make sure I was still breathing, who sang Disney Sing-A-Longs with me and took me to the park and to museums and sent me to summer camp every year, who took me to the American Girl doll store whenever we were in New York and helped me dress up my dolls in a ridiculous number of ridiculously expensive outfits, who took me and my brother sledding and skiing and skating and on hikes and bike rides, who took us to Chicago and New York and Alberta and London and Paris and to this hotel in Ottawa twice a year where we always pretended that the conference rooms were full of witches having their annual conferences (right out of a Roald Dahl book), who would cook three different meals for dinner when my brother and I were both going through picky eating phases and hated the foods that the other one liked, and so on.

They sound like loving parents, right? And like I had a very privileged childhood. So it's hard to say.

If I said that I have a husband who cooks,cleans, drives me everywhere, buys me presents and flowers and tells everyone he loves me to the moon and back but sometimes punches me in the face. Would that sound like a good husband or an abusive one? Do the good things mean the bad thing is any less bad?

I think most people have the capacity for good and bad to varying degrees and that you should not minimize the bad just because things were also good at times. Your parents probably love you but also did some sh***y awful things to you. Both of these realities can be true. The good doesn't negate the bad and vice versa.

Is it forgivable? I don't know and I think it's a very good thing to work on in therapy. Right now I say "I don't have to forgive the person who hurt me but I don't have to hurt them either". So You can tentatively form a relationship while protecting yourself and loving yourself. As you work on you, you can decide if it's worth moving on from the past or if it's just too much

Be safe, whatever you do.

yearning, your parents did both good and bad things in parenting you. it's good to keep both in mind. from what i've read i've never gotten the impression that any of the bad your parents did was intentional. as one wise man said, "forgive them for they know not what they do". just try not to sweep it under the rug, okay girl?

I don't understand that. She wrote that her mom physically abused her for years. How can physical abuse not be intentional? Like.... did she just happen to backhand her on the way to swat a fly? Over and over and over for years???

That post I entered earlier, about her being suicidal and the response and the years of previous abuse, and the post Depletion referred to and several others...
is no one reading those? Or do we think "years of physical abuse" is ambiguous?

I don't get this whole "unintentional" thing....

Every human being on this planet basically "intends" the same thing- to survive and get as much out of this life as we can.

Who wakes up and says, today I'm going to try hard to be totally unhappy, and then I'm going to be a total ***** and ruin everyone's lives?

We all try to do our best. We all "intend" to do our best, and if we lose our temper on the way and hit or mistreat our child... we get a freebie because we didn't "intend" on it? How many freebies? Years worth?

I'm confused about all the rationalizing going on here.

I agree with Jane, who wrote "If I said that I have a husband who cooks,cleans, drives me everywhere, buys me presents and flowers and tells everyone he loves me to the moon and back but sometimes punches me in the face. Would that sound like a good husband or an abusive one? Do the good things mean the bad thing is any less bad? "

Just because people don't **** up 100% of the time, doesn't make the **** ups acceptable, when they rise to the level of "years of physical abuse." Not in my book.

To qualify this statement...there are different degrees of physical abuse, and just to make sure all the facts are being presented accurately, it was not often, and it was not to a particularly bad degree, for the most part. Was it wrong, regardless? Of course. Is any physical abuse ever okay? Of course not. But just so we know what we're talking about here, we're not talking broken bones or bruises all over or whatever.

Actually, Yearning, "abuse" is the designation for unacceptable treatment. You can't say "not particularly bad" and "abuse" are equivalent: by definition abuse is bad. All this equivocating...

It's okay for you to accept being abused for years and shut your mouth to your mother for fear of hurting her because you feel you need her so much.

But I wish you wouldn't try and rationalize it. I think it's hurtful.

You're so conflicted in your initial post, but when anyone picks up on that conflict, you retreat to minimizing your experience.

i haven't read all of yearning's threads, but with the ones i have the impression i got from the specific instances she described was that her parents were trying to discipline her but went about it quite poorly and caused her harm. as misguided as they sounded to me i honestly didn't get the sense they were intentionally trying to hurt her, but that rather they were trying to get her behavior under control. there's a big difference between intending to hurt someone because you enjoy hurting people and having really poor parenting skills and unintentionally causing harm when you think what you are doing is disciplining the kid.

in no way did i say the good things her parents did cancel out the bad. in fact i said the opposite so i really don't know where you got the idea i was on board with that. forgiveness isn't saying what the person did is okay. absolutely not.

since i'm not really comfortable discussing yearning with other posters in the 3rd person on her own thread i'm going to leave it at that. it's only my opinion.

How do you forgive your parents when they have hurt you so bad? How do you let go?

I am trying so hard.

It is sad when we've been so wounded by those who were supposed to love, nurture and care for us that it leaves us conflicted about how much to let them be a part of our lives in the here and now.

If I found myself having to constantly make concessions to them in order to spare them THEIR feelings over MY own, then I'd have very limited contact with them so as to NOT continue to rewound MYSELF for and because of them.

Wishing you the best, Yearning0723 ...

Limiting or cutting off contact completely is not an easy decision to have to make.

Neither is choosing when and if to forgive.

Sincerely,
Pfrog!

Would it feel better to hear us tell you to buck up and stop complaining? To say, listen Yearning, they did their best. So there were episodes of hitting you, ignoring you when you were suicidal and ripping off your pants in anger--so what? Move on. I don't get why that's so bad, I mean you got ice cream and bedtime stories and expensive toys.

The kind of abuse you suffered, and I can identify a lot with this because I also got a lot of love, is very insidious because how can you reconcile that kind of behaviour with the kind of care and attention you also got?

I agree with what your saying about the physical abuse, how can that not be intentional,

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It's hard for me to read what you write here. I suffered a very quiet kind of abuse and neglect. I have never said this here because it is the kind of subtlety that is hard for many to understand, but I want to try and explain it in hopes that you will understand that abuse need not be loud to cause damage. I have mentioned before here that my mother abandoned me, but it was not in the typical way that I let people assume. Through out my adolescence my mother became less and less willing to parent me. She did things like promise to take me on vacation, but would then call me up and tell me that the vacation was just going to be for her. She refused to come to things like parent teacher conferences or plays that I was in because she said the experience would be too over stimulating for her. She would only ever see me for a couple hours a a time because she complained that all of my talking was too much for her (I lived with my dad during all of this). She would get angry at me and tell me that I had to eat my dinner outside alone. She in short just refused to be my mother. All of these betrayals and refusals lead to a series of blow ups where I would get angry and stop talking to her for months at a time. But then I would go back, and hope that she would see how upset it made me and stop. It didn't. But she also never left. I had to be the one to leave. She forced me to leave her because she could not leave me. I had to be the adult, and say, "this relationship is not healthy." All of this was part of the abuse. I never should have had to make such an adult decision as a kid.

But you should also know that my mother is wonderful. She is one of the most sensitive people I have ever known. If you met her you would get the distinct impression that she cares about other people and that she does her best to be kind. She is also very creative, and artistic and has much to share with the world. She did many nice things for me when I was young, and tried her best to get me nice presents even though we were poor. And the truth is that my mom in some ways just gets me.

And there are things about my mother's past that make her actions understandable, but not forgivable to me. I cannot forgive her for making me abandon her. The bottom line is that abuse need not be visceral for its effect to be carnal. Yearning, I think it would be a good idea for you to think about not what your parents did, but how it effected you. Abuse is wrong not because it leaves some visible mark, but because no matter how the marks are made they effect something that all humans are entitled to--a basic sense of self and worth. You have to ask yourself if these things have been damaged by what your parents did. If they have then it is only prudent to consider if a continued relationship with them will truly allow you to recover those things.

Time and distance from the events help a lot. Getting to know yourself does too. Maturity may play a part too, as I was nearly 50 when I was able to move on. I did not forget, and never will, but I stopped letting my feelings control my mind. I saw my parents becoming elderly and frail, and while they hadn't changed or felt any remorse (that I could see) about the abuse and neglect, I decided I wanted to show love to them while I had a chance.

IMO It's apparent that we struggle with this because we do love our parents (or other trusted adult), but their actions hurt us,
and it is very confusing. It takes time to sort it all out. I was able to separate the abusive person from the parent I loved. As I have said, I forgave them for ME only. They never asked, nor did I tell them I forgave. It was a personal thing just for me. I needed peace of mind. Hate and anger can eat you up from the inside. Also as stated before...If the best way you can be at peace with them is to distance yourself, that is what you should do. ((((allme))))

I think this is probably because I want validation; I want to hear that yes, it was bad enough, and yes, it makes sense that I would be hurt by what happened to me, and yes, it wasn't actually my fault. But then when someone tells me that, I worry that I manipulated them into saying it or wasn't telling the whole story or something like that, because it doesn't feel true to me. It feels like I'm just being a drama queen sometimes...

Feelings are different from facts.

One can feel like a drama queen without actually being a drama queen.

With regard to your relationship with your parents, I, for one, certainly have not found you to be a drama queen.

I think that its normal to want that outside affirmation. Abuse is normalized in the homes where it happens. And it would be very normal to internalize this normalization. So its only normal to look elsewhere to internalize the idea that its not normal. So this was probably a good thread for you to have. I hope this all sounds pretty normal.

I was identifying with a lot of what you wrote, except the part I put in italics. I'd have put the cross out thing except they don't have that feature on here. Anyway, I feel in a somewhat similar situation in that I'm not sure whether to try to talk to my mom about what happened. I'm in a different situation since I'm older and it was a longer time ago for me. I feel like my relationship with my Mom is artificial since we don't talk about it, but if I did talk about it, I can't quite imagine having a good outcome. I guess I think she'd laugh at me and belittle me for feeling that it mattered. I guess the closest we've come to talking about it was her making a joke about it. How about you, what do you think would happen if you tried to talk to your Mom about what happened? I'm not suggesting doing that, just wondering how you think she'd react.

Like you, I feel a little conflicted about whether I should continue letting everything be swept under the rug. But I do because Mom is nice to me now and she was pretty good in a lot of ways growing up, too. I wish she could understand and care about who I really am, which would include acknowledging how she hurt me. Like you I'm worrying about whether what happened was "bad enough" or whether something is wrong with me that I deserved it, or it was just bad luck that I should have been able to get over. I know things she did definitely hurt me, and a few things crossed the line of what's acceptable according to any standard therapy views.

If I'm right that she'd laugh at me, and I'm reasonably confident I am, it seems obvious it's not worth it for me to talk to her about it. So the question that's left is how much to spend time with her, given that I filter what I say to keep her happy, and I can't be myself. I feel guilty when I don't spend time with her, and worry that I'm missing out on the sort of time children are supposed to enjoy with their parents, but I also feel like spending time with her is validating her view of me as not-quite-acceptable.

Sorry, I'm going on about myself and not getting to any words of wisdom for you.

I tend to be sensitive about people being less than genuine but I don't think you're being a drama queen.

I think this is hard to acknowledge no matter who your abuser is. In group therapy for domestic violence I heard all sorts of stories about how good a provider the man was, how good a father, how loving and nurturing he was, that just didn't compute. That man was arrested because of something he did, bad enough that social services stepped in and forced women to come to this therapy. How can the women defend the men?

Then they asked for my story. My child called 911 during a very loud argument, in which he laid down on top of me to prevent me getting away. There were no blows exchanged, and rather than fear, I felt rage. He was arrested, DSS forced him to move out of our home, and we had to submit to every type of indignity they asked us to. Why did the state get involved in my life when other people were hurt so much worse than I was?

It was explained to me that what he had done was kidnapping, holding me there against my will. He may not have hit me but he exerted control over me, and so subtly that I was defending him on the basis of "look what happened to all these other people! What happened to me is nothing."

Your parents brought you into this world, but you don't owe them any debt for that. They made mistakes whether they choose to acknowledge them or not. Subtle or blatant, they treated you in ways that left scars. They may never say they were wrong or admit fault in any way.

The choice is yours, to have a relationship with them or not. At least keep it honest on your part. They are your parents, you want to salvage your relationship with them, acknowledge that they did wrong and hurtful things to you. Don't take up for your abusers. Don't pretend it didn't happen just because it could have been so much worse. You don't have to defend your choices to anyone other than yourself. Use this chance in therapy to work through whether or not you are doing the right thing FOR YOU.


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I guess maybe when I make comparisons, I'm asking the wrong question - instead of asking if my childhood was normal or would have been acceptable in other families, I ask whether it was the worst type of abuse possible. So obviously the answer to both questions is no, and maybe that's enough.

I think it is possible for people to be both good and bad. They can do good works/be good with some people and still be bad in interacting with any one individual. I don't see forgiveness as something to necessarily strive for unless it benefits the forgiver somehow.