Desiring forgiveness - Al-Anon Family Group

Aloha · ~*Service Worker*~

Desiring forgiveness

Codependent · Senior Member

I so feel your pain. I,too, was thinking about how much I love my A, but also about all the things he has "done" to me and how little I have ever gotten in return from him and I got angry and hurt all over again. I have accepted that I love him. I, too, want to accept forgiving him too- what is the point in loving someone, accepting someone, but still not being able to forgive someone? I am anxious to hear the response of others...

serendipity · ~*Service Worker*~

I have shared this many times before. I heard at a meeting that is it not my job to forgive. That is HP's job. My job is to process what has happened and then turn it over to HP.

Now that being said, I am not even close to that. Infact, I am not even to a point of trying to forgive. But it is an interesting way to think about forgiveness and when I was still with A it helped. Now that I am divorced, it does nothing for me. LOL! I have some serious issues with forgiveness hmm

Tuggboat · Senior Member

You are so on track Aloha. In my case It took many many months of nightly prayer for My AF. My sincerity in prayer for his well being and health, happiness and even weath only became sincere when I accepted his alcoholism as a disease. Even with all this prayer and acceptance It was in the forth step that I found a release. By the time I was there, I had a profound gratitude for the program. I had come to love it and the people in it though I still had a road filled with fear ahead of me. I started each night with sincere prayer that what I do be God's will and that he direct my pen.

In one little sentence I recognized that I would not be here, where I loved, without him driving me here. Its not that I never got angry again but in my own experience and in this way the constant hatred and desire to inflict pain and suffering on him was gone.

Besides my own ESH I found a couple links you might like:

This piece among other things asks us an Important question.

What is the purpose of our recovery? If we are truly in pursuit of serenity, of healing, of a sense of inner peace that will help us to deal with and possibly even enjoy whatever life brings, we must improve the way we interact with others.

From, page 86 of How Alanon works for Families and friends of Alcoholics

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/pdf/B22_11.pdf

Yet some of us balk at the idea of adopting such an attitude toward people who, in the past, may have caused us great physical, emotional, financial, or spiritual harm. If we find their behavior totally reprehensible, why should we bother to look for a place within ourselves that can relate to them with love? Arent some things simply unforgivable?

from the end of the reading:

Forgiveness is no favor. We do it for no one but ourselves. We
simply pay too high a price when we refuse to forgive. Lingering
resentments are like acid eating away at us. Rehearsing and rerehearsing old injuries robs us of all that is precious. Shame never liberated a single spirit. And self-righteousness never softened a heart. Can we afford to perpetuate such self-destructiveness? Surely we can make better use of our time and energy. Although we may despise what others have done, if we keep in mind that everything we are now trying to do has the goal of healing us, we are bound to decide that the best thing we can do for ourselves is to forgive.
....

Heres another interesting link from an AA Board.

Emmet Fox on Forgiveness

At the bottom of the reading are a few more you might like also.

-- Edited by Tuggboat at 08:53, 2008-02-20

lin0606 · ~*Service Worker*~

Aloha, have you ever been to an open AA meeting, or heard any AA speakers? For me, a big part of forgiveness was realizing that it was not a case of "big bad alcoholic, poor innocent victim me".

Instead, it was two people who both had issues coming into the relationship, and whose problems intermeshed. I don't want to say I deserved to be treated as badly as I was, or anything like that, but.... I was willing to be treated badly. He could never have disrespected me as much as he did if I had not disrespected myself already. I had a part in what happened.

When I added that insight to the compassion I gained by realizing how much HE had been suffering all the time (it had looked like he was merrily going his way, wreaking havoc, but that was not really true) and pled a bit dollop of detachment on top, forgiveness started to come.

Then comes the "taking care of myself' part. We are taught a nlot of nonsense in our society, about human relaionships and how they "ought" to be. One thing we are taught is that forgiveness gives a clean slate. Obviously, that's BS. We need to learn from our experiences, and to protect ourselves, especially if our A is still active.

If your dog was badly wounded, and bit you when you tried to care for him, you would not hate him for it, wouldn't hold it against him. However, you'd be a fool if you continued to tend him with your bare hands - you'd put on leather gloves or something.

Heartbroken · Senior Member

(((Aloha)))

The desire to learn to forgive is, in my opinion, the window into a beautiful soul. To be able to forgive is noble, and loving, for it takes a humble spirit to do it; one that recognizes that '...there but for the Grace of God go I...'.

With all that the A's carry around, compassion for their burden may be the way forward in that it might help you to forgive them, if only by realising that your act of forgiveness will lessen their burden of the HUGE amount of hurt, and guilt of estrangement that they do already carry.

Forgiving is a discipline; it is the opposite of revenge, and we all know what a revengeful heart can do.

If I have the choice of forgiving or not forgiving, I CHOSE FORGIVING because I benefit by it too, so it presents me with a win/win situation.

Just my

worth.

HeartB

-- Edited by Heartbroken at 20:17, 2008-02-19

Jean4444 · ~*Service Worker*~

I think forgiveness comes when it comes, its not something I can force. Its kind of slow and subtle, for me. Its not like one day I feel no forgiveness and then one day I have suddenly forgiven someone. I was so full of resentment at one time, I was so desperate for forgiveness. I so wanted away from all that toxic resentment. But it was not so quick or simple. It took its own time to slowly dissolve, I think.

Much of it had to do (for me) with living one single day at a time. Inside of each day, locating blessings/miracles/the good stuff and pretty much ignoring the bad stuff. The more I did this, the more the resentments drifted away and I focussed more and more of my attention on positives and the things that were going well in my life than on the things that were challenging to me.

Its a tough question and one that is very very human, I think. I like what Seren said about HP doing the forgiving especially when we cannot, at the moment. Hugs, J.

Peggy7 · ~*Service Worker*~

Deciding I "want" to forgive rather than I "have" to forgive was the starting place for me.

Forgiveness is the mental, emotional and/or spiritual process of ceasing to feel resentment or anger against another person for a perceived offence, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.

In other words, I had to be ready to stop expecting the other person to understand it in my terms. They don't have to be willing to accept the forgiveness, nor must I continue to put myself in the same place that caused the injustice.

For me it's a matter of no longer keeping score on another persons faults.

Tuggboat · Senior Member

I was studying that page 86 reading this morning and I think I see that some groundwork needs to be laid before we can forgive. This may be why it took so long to forgive my AF. So often we talk of boundaries and we dress them up but in reality they are nothing more than ultimatums with a new name. I, for a long time have considered boundaries not as something someone else crosses (since I can't control them) but linest hat define the size of my own world. My world was once very small and isolated. It was a few rooms, a few blocks, some work. Emotionally and socially it had small and strict limits.

Our literature seems to say we had no boundaries, that are lives had become so entangled with the A's that our boundaries were not our own. It may say in an indirect way (since forgiveness is the end of the section) that before we can forgive we must detach and before we can detach, we must define ourselves and that the kind of boundaries that help us define ourselves rather than control someone else are the kinds of boundaries we need to be establishing.

Does anyone else read this in a similar way? I have been looking for a long time as to why it seems harder for us to get to forgiveness. I have heard many people say it is just not possible. I know it is though. :)

The material presented here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method to exchange information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal level.