How do you forgive someone who has wronged you?

[Ilovehim]

I hate that I have to write this but I dont want to talk about it to anybody I know so I figured maybe you guys can help me out. Although I am happy with my love life and I adore my boyfriend with all my heart, I feel resentment towards my ex. I am over him and thought I had completely forgiven him UNTILL i bumped into him. It has been a year and a half so please dont misunderstand..i could care less about him and have changed my number, cut all contat etc..HOWEVER when i saw his face, i just wanted to punch him so bad (not literally...well...lol jk) but i felt SO annoyed to be around him and having to go through the whole "long time, how have you been convo?" i kept it short and sweet and left the first chance I got BUT ever since (it has been a week) he has been popping up everywhere on my friends facebook etc. I don't want to hear NOTHING about him. He f**ked me over so bad, I had completely forgotten about him untill recently he's everywhere. Honestly he doesn't cross my mind, HOWEVER WHEN he does i cant be like "oh its whatever" about it...seeing his face irritates me...how do i completely forgive him and be able to look at him without wishing he lived in another country??? may sound stupid but im serious about this question...:o

[TaraMaiden]

The first thing you have to consider is actually whether you WANT to forgive him.

 

You may say you're completely over him - and I'm not disbelieving you - but your reaction shows that you're still carrying emotion of a kind, and that he still provokes a reaction.

Who do you want to forgive him, for?

Your benefit, or his?

yours of course.

He's obviously happy as Larry and completely oblivious.

 

So actually, it's not forgiveness you want to find.

it's resentment you want to drop.

 

Wouldn't that be more accurate?

[Crusoe]

I think the key to forgiveness is understanding, but being able to understand and forgive doesn't necessarliy mean resentment will disappear.

[DustySaltus]

Well, my ex does live in another country and I still hold a lot of feelings inside as well and I am now with someone else. I was engaged and living in her country and the way things unraveled at the end really just made me jaded and bitter. Then I realized how much power I was giving her and I just tried my best to take baby steps towards getting back to my happy old self.

 

That anger and resentment is hidden away right now. But like yourself I know that if I did see her it would trigger a bunch of emotions. Can you share with us what happened at the end that you hold all of this anger?

[Ilovehim]

Well yeah, resentment I guess.

 

It doesn't matter what he did, he screwed me over and never apologized after, and disappeared out of my life. I feel as though he just disappered out of my life, never kept in touch and what bothered me for so long is that I suffered alot and he was never there. I didn't deserve to be hurt like that and never received an apology. He moved on so fast and has never dropped a tear, his life was always great no matter what wrongs he caused. I feel like it's not fair, like everything was very uneven. Can you be such an ********* and always have everything handed to you?

 

 

I understand this is rediculous and i shouldnt even care after so long, and on one side i really don't but when i see him, it just brings it all back. --not the feelings i had for him but the resentment i feel. i cant be fake and be nice to him. i'm a forgiving person but an ********* who screwed me over doesn't exactly bring joy at an encounter.

[TaraMaiden]

Nobody can help you.

Nobody can drop this, but you.

Nobody can get into your mind and change it, but you.

Nobody can stop feeling as you do, but you.

This resentment, and anger, is all generated by you.

He may be the source, but you are the fertiliser.

You keep feeding it.

 

Forgiving him here, is not the issue, is it?

You don't want to forgive him.

You want him to apologise, and THEN, maybe you can forgive him.

Maybe then, you can stop resenting him.

Maybe then, you'll feel you can drop it.

 

Well, unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Is it?

So, now you have to decide one thing:

How long?

 

How long are you going to continue feeling like this?

How long are you going to blame him, for how you feel now?

 

"The Past is over.

Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past."

 

Forgive him without the apology.

Forgive him without him knowing.

Just let it go, for goodness' sake.

 

What other choice do you have?

(Other than carrying on as you are now, that is.....)

[jimmynorton]

Think about people who forgiven your mistakes.In life everyone will do mistakes forgiving faults makes you great person.

[Scottdmw]

I know it really sucks. A similar thing happened to me, and I have struggled for years with continuing resentment and bitterness even as I've tried to forgive and get over it and let it go. I would go long periods of time without thinking about it and then something would trigger a memory, and I would be back into a horrible mood thinking about how much I was wronged and dreaming up ways that I could basically hurt the other person back.

 

One of the biggest things that helped me was at some point to just decide that I wasn't going to let myself think about it anymore. I had thought about it enough, I had “dealt” with it whatever that means, I had learned all there was to learn by reviewing the memories. At a certain point it just became a kind of inner drama that I would play out.

 

For me it was very much like I got a sort of sick pleasure from thinking about how much of a victim I was. It felt bad, but it felt good in a strange way too, thinking about how right I was, how wrong the other person was, how injust and unfair the whole thing was. It was sort of the pleasure of self-righteousness. The problem for me was that it was self-reinforcing, the more I thought about it the more I wanted to keep thinking about it because it was pleasurable in a strange way.

 

Finally, I just had to force myself to stop. If thoughts of the other person came in I would put them aside as quickly as I could. I would not try to answer the thoughts at all, just tell myself it's not useful to think about that and move to something else.

 

I don't know if you are a believer in God, but if you are here is another idea. When I would get into those moods of wanting to be a victim and feeling resentment and anger, it also helped me quite a lot to say to myself “God wants me to be whole and healed”, and to really let myself experience in my heart God’s grace and peace. I found that if I did this every time the bitter ruminations would start, it was a way that I could get out of it quickly and get my mind back on something useful.

 

Scott