[mojo321]

I was reading about Forgiveness and "just compensation" at the following website:

Can't We Just Forgive and Forget? #1

It relates to infidelity and why it is so hard to forgive, and how "just compensation" from the offending spouse can make it easier for the offended spouse to forgive.

Then I got to wondering, does this possibly apply to the nature of ALL forgiveness? Even for minor offenses?

A lightbulb just went off for me when it comes to my wife's method of "stone walling" or "silent treatmenting" me for my offenses!

First of all, I don't think that my offenses are always really offenses. They are just me, being myself, and not being in complete harmony with her views, ideas, or plans.

But other times, sure, I do things that are inconsiderate that I regret afterward.

Either way, when she stonewalls me, what she is REALLY doing is "getting her just compensation" in the form of putting me in "purgatory". I am paying the price for my offense by being shut out of her love.

Now, whether I actually did something inconsiderate or not, this form of "compensation" is not actually "just". It is unjust compensation! How does me going through pain for a certain amount of time give her the ability to forgive and move forward? I don't know, but that's EXACTLY what is going on!

So the next time she goes all silent treatment on me, I'm going to have to decide if I actually did something inconsiderate, or if she is just mad because I didn't fall in line with "her reality".

If I really did something inconsiderate, I will say "I'm sorry, and I want to make it up to you by promising to not do that anymore, and take the following steps to help ensure I don't."

If I didn't actually do anything inconsiderate, I will say "What do you want to say to me right now? What am I supposed to apologize for? I see you are mad, and you are making me feel your anger at me, but I don't have any idea what I would do or say differently than what I did. I can't apologize if I didn't do anything wrong. So it isn't right that you are collecting some debt from me through "time served".

[hamster-bamster]

Mojo,

You should realize that forgiveness is a construct and that the main premise underlying the whole site you are reading is dubious.

To the extent that it is helping you, sure go ahead and use it, but do not over-invest, and be mindful of the fact that making a marriage into a pure barter agreement is only one of the many ways of building marriages.

What you are describing is a combination of barter and emotional punishment.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by mojo321

I was reading about Forgiveness and "just compensation" at the following website:

Can't We Just Forgive and Forget? #1

It relates to infidelity and why it is so hard to forgive, and how "just compensation" from the offending spouse can make it easier for the offended spouse to forgive.

Then I got to wondering, does this possibly apply to the nature of ALL forgiveness? Even for minor offenses?

First off, I want to suggest you tone down the enthusiasm with respect to the site. The site's author is self-serving. I did not read in-depth, but I did read enough to grasp that the author is in the business of selling marital help. Apparently, in order to increase the demand, he claims that marital infidelity is the worst thing that can happen in a marriage. Clearly, he has never lived in the real world and has never heard of people being held at gunpoint and/or choked to death by their spouses.

Also, and independently, his ideas are highly simplistic. I bet it helps sell marital help - complexity is a much tougher sell. So on your idea of taking the concept and applying it widely:

When you are trying to take an oversimplified idea that was oversimplified even within the boundaries of the original context in which it was conceived, and, expand it to apply outside of that context, you might be following a wrong path.

Secondly, I personally do not use the concept of forgiveness at all, but I do see the value people bring to my life even if they are wrongdoers. Eventually, even in the context of people who clearly offended me and offended me deeply, I still see some positive and still see some silver lining. Some lesson, some blessing, some thought they provoked that eventually caused good things - along those lines. It has nothing to do with forgiveness, and everything to do with dialectic/duality.

[mojo321]

Whether you "use the concept of forgiveness" in your life or not is simply semantics.

You have forgiven people. You just call it something different. And you use different terminology to describe the mechanics of it in your mind.

Your description seems to indicate that you never forgive anyone of anything. You simply see that stripe on them forever. But you DO focus on their silver linings. That IS forgiveness. It's just semantics. Forgiveness is the choice to focus on the silver linings and stop focusing on the bad stripe.

Forgiveness takes time when you have been wronged. Just as focusing on the "silver linings" takes time. It is a process that you go through. When you are deeply wronged, as you say, you don't INSTANTLY begin focusing on their silver linings! That's what you do AFTER forgiveness.

As for the website you say I should be careful of, I see your point. BUT again, I think it is all just semantics, or perhaps a perspective. If you choose to step outside the relationship, and look seriously at the mechanics of how relationships actually work, I think you will see that there is a lot of truth in what he says. Is it self serving? Only in the way that all relationships have a give and take balance that makes them work, whether you want to recognize that or not. It is reality. People choose their mates on a number of factors, some of which are conscious and some subconscious. But many of these factors are self-serving, if anything, self-serving on how your spouse "makes you feel".

When infidelity occurs, a major bite is taken out of those factors. If both parties want to rebuild the relationship, then those factors have to be rebuilt. The author of the site is simply getting down and dirty and analyzing those factors. Some people may not want to know. Some may even take offense, or even get defensive. But it is all quite simply the honest truth.

[winter4me]

Contexts do change...
Recently, I am experiencing a strange (to me) response/lack of towards someone who said and did something(s) I would have once considered flat out unforgivable and in need of retribution of some sort---
Years ago, two days after my brother killed himself, I went into work (already a hostile environment since the administrator had, I learned later, essentially instructed people to do all they could to be rid of me for personal reasons related to a friend of hers---long odd story but I received phone calls from people there I did not know personally once I left, telling me the story, with apologies...)oddly, I worked again for the same "people" without incident later---as a consultant/contracted nurse.
Anyway, this woman (who was, at the time, all too eager to please the boss) came up to me as I entered the building and said "Oh we were going to write you up today but I guess it isn't a good day." smiling------------(this is in a psych hospital setting by the way)-----
Luckily, I was still numb and didn't respond. (except to leave my keys in the office a few weeks later with a simple "I quit effective immediately" note)
Now, fifteen years later, this woman is, in another setting, a coworker...even a "supervisor"...and acting like a long lost friend....oddly, as the months drift by, I don't find myself astonished, or even angry when she comes and sits next to me, chats and clearly wants me to like her (she is not the most liked person around there at all)----I realize, with an odd distance, that she is troubled, more so than me, and that she will never come after me again, in fact will defend me always now....and where I at first thought I should share my past experience with our mutual boss as an fyi, I no longer feel that way at all.
She is just there, and I let her be as she is...my anger is so long gone...forgetting is not possible, nor should it be, it is not even forgiveness, it is a kind of letting go and putting aside.....................................
and, perhaps a recognition that this is one basically troubled, unhappy woman who is getting old and trying to mellow her self, and who may even be a bit afraid of what I might say or do...

[mojo321]

And if she were your spouse? Would you be content with feeling this way towards her? Is this her way of wanting to make amends without having to apologize?

My mother-in-law is similar. It hurts my wife to this day, though they both go on as if it is old news. Without the apology, it will never be any better than what you describe about your co-worker.. Which may be fine for a relationship with a co-worker. But not fine with someone you are trapped in a blood-line "love" that can't be broken.

I know this type of relationship all too well. Sometimes you are on the other side of the coin, too.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by mojo321

Whether you "use the concept of forgiveness" in your life or not is simply semantics.

You have forgiven people. You just call it something different. And you use different terminology to describe the mechanics of it in your mind.

Your description seems to indicate that you never forgive anyone of anything. You simply see that stripe on them forever. But you DO focus on their silver linings. That IS forgiveness. It's just semantics. Forgiveness is the choice to focus on the silver linings and stop focusing on the bad stripe.

Nope. I do not focus on the silver lining. I am able to hold both sides simultaneously in my mind. I am aware of the wrongdoing and the positive contribution to my life simultaneously. There is absolutely no forgiveness in that - I am just appreciative of the complexity of RL and able to see all sorts of shades of colors, rather than just black and white.

There is also no CHOICE - I do not choose to focus on the silver lining. The thought process unfolds by itself, without my making any choices to think of any topic or subject. Eventually, the thought process reveals positive sides in people whose positive sides were not immediately apparent to me. I do not see it as forgiveness at all, but if you do see it as forgiveness, that is definitely fine as well, but then I can tell you for sure that you are on the wrong path TRYING to forgive - that kind of forgiveness happens organically without any effort. As long as you are efforting forgiveness, or, are asking somebody else to effort forgiveness, things won't work, so you might as well stop and not waste your mental energy.

Or, you could be calling something else "forgiveness" and then I cannot comment. But if you see the appreciation of the silver lining as forgiveness, then, being an expert on this particular strand of forgiveness, I can tell you that it cannot be sped up, forced, or efforted in general.

[mojo321]

We will have to agree to disagree then Ham Bam. I see an impasse here! But I do find it very interesting and will give it some thought!