Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a tool we use to let our biggest problems in relationships drift away. My relationship went on the rocks with my father when I was 18, and now I am 25. We both still haven't forgiven each other, which has led us to a point of stagnation.

Without forgiveness the person who has wronged you, or is still doing so lives in the back of your head. Often times it creates a mental dissonance of sorts. When you are in their presences it becomes more difficult to think or be yourself. For instance, i used to use heroin and other drugs until I was 22, and because of this my father can't forgive me. On the flip side, I have had a complete hatred for him since I was young. Mandatory hair cuts. Discouraging every major I chose in college. He even called me slow on my birthday and told me I was not the same son he knew.

The point of this post is to firstly emphasis the importance of practicing forgiveness before it gets out of hand. Secondly, i wrote to this post to ask for advice on how to solve a problem with forgiveness that has taken over an important part of my life. How can I forgive a man who has criticized my every choice, and how can I get him to forgive me for making mistakes.

Forgiveness can be hard. one definition of forgiveness is to let go of anger and resentment. that means to let go of those haircuts and judgment of your college majors and being called slow. and to do it without expectations of what you will get back in return. another definition is to make things as right as possible. how can you make things as right as possible with your dad. let him know that you have made mistakes and disappointed him, but you are a different man today. live that life of goodness and forgiveness toward him. but it is up to him to come around. take care.

socialcancer...

The following is a copy of a post I made on another thread.

Forgiveness... ah yes. It's one of those horribly misunderstood processes where it's commonly believed that the person that's to be forgiven must first deserve your forgiveness. It's as if forgiveness has to be earned if it's to be given... and YOU are the person that sets the price.

In fact, forgiveness has nothing to do with the person that you may or may not choose to forgive. It has nothing to do with them what-so-ever! Forgiveness is about doing what's in your own best interest. It's about being able to know that you are a whole and self-validating human being regardless of any of the real or perceived mistreatment you received by another person. Forgiveness is something that's entirely self-contained within you. There are no external elements involved. It has nothing to do with any relationship with anyone other than the one you have with yourself.

The relationship a person has with their parents can be so confusing. On the one hand, they are your parents. Most people, regardless of their age, will unconsciously revert back to having a parent-child relationship with their parents any time they're around them. I mean, hey, they're your parents for heaven's sake! Right? Well, yes and no. Granted, they are your biological progenitors, but on the other hand, they are both simply human beings that are no different than you or anyone else. As human beings they both have strengths and weaknesses. They do things that are in your best interest and sometimes they do things that are not in your best interest. In other words, they are just normal people. Normal people often say and do stupid and hurtful things because, well, they're just normal people! But, I think most people have a hard time seeing their parents as anything other than the persons that they looked to for all their material, emotional and developmental needs as a child. They perceive their parents as being much-larger-than-life. They often remain in the parent/child role for their whole life, regardless of circumstance.

My father was a very physically and emotionally abusive person. I intensely disliked him for a good share of my life. I didn't respect or admire him at all, even to this day. I spent a lot of my time being angry with him and trying to figure out a way to get even for all of his abuse. Yes indeed. I certainly expended a lot of my energy on disliking him.

And then one day while I was fussing and fuming over something my father did, an idea occured to me! That idea was:

Why am I expending so much energy on being angry and hurt because of my father? I mean, does HE care how I feel about him? Is HE upset over anything I think? Does how I feel about him affect him in any way or is he just living his life as he normally would? Could he say or do anthing in the present time to make me feel differently about him? Does how I feel about him right now make me a better person? Is there a lesson here that I need to learn that I'm ignoring?

Well, as you can well imagine, I finally figured out that nothing I said or did had any affect him at all. He was completely oblivious to my displeasure. The only thing that I was accomplishing by feeling such intense anger was to simply make myself unhappy. I was allowing myself to be diminished by my own thoughts and feelings. How crazy was that? Yet, that's exactly what I was doing. I was doing nothing to make myself a happier person. I was not acting in a way that was in my own best interest. I was hurting myself for absolutely no reason at all. Yes, there WAS a lesson that I needed to learn from holding such anger inside me for no apparent reason. The lesson was that I needed to learn to let go of all of those negative things that were standing in the way of my happiness... and to STOP holding on to things that didn't matter. I needed to learn how to STOP holding on to things that did nothing but diminish who I am. THAT is what I learned to do. It's called forgiveness. It had nothing to do with my father. It had ONLY to do with me acting in my own self interest. To NOT forgive only caused me to carry around a lot of meaningless anger and resentment. The only person it was affecting was me. Letting go of all that "stuff" was in my own best interest. It helped me be a better person so I could move on with my life.

I forgave my father. Once I did that... I mean, not just tell my self that I forgave him, but truly DID forgive him in my heart, it made an immediate change in how I felt about myself and about my father. I could see that he was just another human being doing what he needed to do to get by. I could see how fallible he was as a human being. He was just a normal guy that treated his children as his parents treated him. Once I was able to see him for who he really was I felt compassion for him. I knew that in spite of the years of abuse I still Loved him. After that though, I let him know that because of his abuse he would never be "dad" to me and that he'd long ago given up that privledge. But I let him know that he could certainly be my friend. I told him that I would like to be friends on an equal footing with him as fellow human beings. From then on we were able to talk of many things that we'd never spoken of before. We both found closure and contentment.

Dan

Those are good questions, socialcancer - how to forgive someone who has criticized you, and how can you get him to forgive you for your mistakes. Perhaps his ability to forgive has to come from within him? Is it necessary for you to forgive him? Can you forgive yourself, therefore, for continuing to not forgive him, at this point in time? Maybe forgiveness will come later? Or, is there a way to proceed, from this point, with a fresh view about things?