Do you remember being a curious kid of the world, excited to ask questions about life and… everything? Looking back, it seems many of the questions I asked were met with mystical dissatisfying answers or a ” just because.” Too often it seems, we live in a world of fortune-cookie answers and ethics. On this blog I’ve talked about the positives of breaking away from negative relationships, whether they be with friends or family. One of those popular fortune-cookie bromides could easily be applied here, namely: “You’ve got to love and forgive everyone.”
I don’t agree. This was a life-lesson that was often told to me, and upon first glance I always accepted it. It was about love which is good, right? But upon exploring the “virtue” of forgiveness, I think this phrase is meaningless…harmful even.
It seems we assume that in life there is only room for 1.) petty grudges (which make you a horrible person) or 2.) forgiveness (which makes you good as God apparently.) When I talk about leaving negative relationships it is about neither; it is about processing and acceptance, ultimately letting go. In this post I am going to examine grudges, forgiveness and acceptance and explore what they each really mean.
Grudges vs. Examination:
Grudge is a dirty word. To say someone holds a grudge is a total put-down meaning they’re immature or brutish. But before you reach forgiveness or acceptance with someone, do you have to hang in grudge-land? I think not. Rather than holding silent grudges we can take a break from the relationship in question to examine it, working towards coming to a certainty about it and taking as long as we need to.
Grudge is synonymous with anger, which I think gives anger a bad rep. Healthy anger is a valid and beautiful emotion, just like sadness or happiness or any other emotion. Healthy anger is good and feeling angry over a relationship gone-awry should not be confused with holding a grudge.
But what exactly is a grudge? To have a grudge, I think you’ve still got to be in the relationship. To hold a grudge implies that the relationship has not been processed or examined, no final decision or peace has been made. It is pure passive aggression. It assumes that there is still a relationship there but one person is holding something over the other’s head. It is when a relationship turns destructive and stagnates that ugly grudges seem to pop up.
Forgiveness:
Forgiveness is a valid and beautiful thing. True forgiveness can only be possible after deep examination of the relationship and after gaining retribution. For example, if a friend steals from you, retribution for that might be that they pay you back for what they stole with something additional for your inconvenience — and of course a heartfelt apology.
The sad truth is that a lot of us don’t find true forgiveness through processing and retribution, and further we often stay in relationships where retribution is not even possible. Why would we do this to ourselves? If you think about it, the answer is painfully clear: it makes things much easier in the short-term. “Forgive and forget” allows us to escape anxiety about ourselves and the relationship. It is much easier to conform and compromise than to make waves, I know because I did this most all of my life.
What are the consequences to blind forgiveness? If you are thinking of forgiving someone, ask yourself: who is this benefiting? Blind forgiveness can cause us to become slaves to our histories, living out patterns over and over. Low-self esteem, depression and dissociation also result from this lack of integrity.
Yet all of this is touted as virtue. As human beings we want to do good, always. Yet too often this deep desire is used against us. These so called ethics are a great barrier to freedom. These beliefs claim to be about the purest feeling of all–about love. But this is not love, this is self-sacrifice. Real love means first loving yourself and taking care of yourself, not self destruction for the sake of others. Blind forgiveness is no virtue, it blocks your capacity for closure, it is to deny your emotions and ultimately deny yourself, keeping you in chains. I say don’t forgive and forget, but rather forgive and guard your heart, being extra careful and aware.
Acceptance:
When a relationship is past retribution, there are more options than floating around in grudge-limbo. After examining the relationship, a valid place to end is at acceptance. This is letting go, accepting the person for who they are, knowing that you cannot change them and therefore cannot have a healthy relationship with them. You can now see the relationship for what it was, for it’s beauty and it’s flaws. The good times don’t need to be erased, they are your memories to have and they are okay. Letting go comes from a place of knowing, of knowing that the relationship is not healthy or right for you.
This is by no means easy, and we are never really taught that this hard task is an option or okay. While standing over the cliff of acceptance it now seems easy to see why people stay in dull and bad relationships their entire lives. This is also hard because acceptance only comes from a place of true mental clarity. It takes a great deal of being in self and accepting responsibility for your role in the relationship. Processing a relationship is a ton of mental and emotional work, and coming to acceptance is some serious mental heavy lifting, and after arriving here there are still no easy answers. When true forgiveness and retribution are not on the table, acceptance is the path to true freedom, growth and real happiness.
If you are left curious about forgiveness in your relationships, ask yourself, “Who is this benefiting?” Also a good rule of thumb for any good relationship is that there needs to be about 10 times the good times to bad times. It is not easy to come to either forgiveness or acceptance and the road to both is from examining the relationship. I have found in my life that the easiest way to examine is to step away, to take a break. While I have many relationships in the queue of my mind either in the “examination” or “acceptance” stage, I hold no grudges.
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6 Comments
Right-freakin’-on!!
sexgenderbody´s last blog ..The "debate" Over Repro. Freedom
Forgiveness is the evil enabling slave morality of Christians. To pay what has not been earned is to subsidize a continuance and increase of that which earns contempt.
It is those who preach forgiveness whom we have to thank for the amount of evil in the world today.
It is a false dichotomy of manipulation to say that we must forgive or hold a grudge.
Nathan´s last blog ..The Argument From Morality In Action
Another excellent post. I’ve had struggles in my head about this whole forgiveness stuff too, people always give those 2 options “never forgive and you’ll always remain unhappy and angry, or forgive the person and you’ll let go of all the wrong things they did to you.”
Quite frankly I never really understood the logic behind the statement, but all the propaganda around it certainly got to me.
There was a girl on the FDR boards not long back whose therapist was coming out with this kind of stuff. I hope I don’t find myself with a therapist who says the same.
No one ever says just letting go altogether is an option.
Thank for writing another liberating post, Rabbit.
Nathan- Well put, sir!
Candice- Thank you for sharing! You know, something about this is very female to me…maybe it is the “love everyone” but something about this mass blind forgiveness feels like something girls especially are taught, though it could just be my POV.
hmm thats an interesting point. I think women preach it more than men when I think about it, like if we were upset because my father had shouted or said something really unfair, my mother would teach us to “let it go,” and that whenever he said something nasty to her she could always rise above it because she would let the nasty comment go over her head instead of letting it hurt her, or something along those lines. \
Whether or not the idea is taught more so specifically to girls I’m not sure.
I think for social and perhaps biological reasons though it probably seems safer for most women to forgive and forget than to break out of the relationship altogether. Which might be why it’s more important for them. Not to mention that mothers tend to be the primary care givers of their children, so if they are abusive all they have to rely on is their children forgiving them and forgetting about what happened, which could be why it is drilled so firmly into peoples’ minds.