Forgiveness is a Choice

We most often associate the topic of forgiveness with religion. It is a concept that clergy talk about, not psy-chologists. Our religious training tells us that we should forgive; after all, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Forgiveness has profound implications for mental health. We confront the issue when we have been betrayed, either by a friend, a business associate or, most profoundly, by a spouse who has cheated on us. We also have to deal with issues of forgiveness when we have experienced emotional or physical abuse, current or past traumatic events, and humiliation. Intuitively we know that if we could forgive we would feel less bitter, less resentful, and less burdened; we know that it would be good for us to forgive. It is easier said than done.

In this article I will discuss the meaning of the term forgiveness, its psychological implications in terms of personal growth, and an approach toward learning to forgive. Perhaps through a deeper understanding of what it means to forgive, why it is important for human development, and how we can learn to forgive, it will be-come easier for us to do so.

What is forgiveness?

When most of us think of forgiveness, we think in terms of making amends with someone who has offended us or whom we have offended. One party or the other holds the power to release the other from the guilt asso-ciated with the occurrence. We also think of apology. We ask to be forgiven for some transgression and seek to be absolved. We want to feel re-connected. Being asked for forgiveness puts us in the position of strength; seeking forgiveness leaves us feeling weak or humble.

When we forgive, we are saying to the person who has offended us that we will hold no grudge and, that while we do not condone the behavior of the offender, we will not hold it against him or her and may be willing to move on with the relationship. When we receive forgiveness, we feel uplifted and sometimes even grateful toward the one who grants us forgiveness. Forgiveness renews our spirit and helps us move forward.

By contrast, when we do not forgive, we feel resentful, angry, and even bitter. We are hurt and seek revenge or retribution. We want the person who has offended us to suffer as we are suffering; we want them to feel pain for their transgression. We may feel a sense of righteousness, after all, we were wronged. This righteousness, however, may be short lived. The resentment we feel may build, leaving us feeling emotionally constricted and even debilitated. The thought that the offending party may not be experiencing guilt is even more offensive to us and causes us even greater resentment.

For the most part, we have associated forgiveness with receiving an apology from another person. We believe that without contrition on the part of the offender, there can be no forgiveness. Take a look at the reactions of the survivors of the Oklahoma bombing. Timothy McVeigh showed no remorse for his action. Without such remorse the survivors find it difficult to forgive. McVeigh holds the power to keep these people suffering as they harbor their resentment, anger, and bitterness. They want retribution; they want him dead. Only then will they feel a sense of relief and closure.

What if we could make forgiveness a one way street? What if we could forgive without depending upon the offender to express guilt? What if we did not need to be asked for forgiveness, but could grant it nonetheless? What if we could say to an offender, “whether you wish it or not, I forgive you.” What would such unilateral forgiveness do for us?

Let’s examine the case of a spouse who has betrayed his wife by having an affair with another woman. When this happens, the aggrieved party experiences a myriad of emotions. She feels deeply wounded by her hus-band’s actions. He violated a basic trust. Their marriage contract stated that he would forsake all others. He violated the contract as well as the trust. She feels diminished. Her husband chose to be intimate with an-other woman; he preferred to be with her rather than with his wife. The wife feels less than the chosen woman. Her pride is wounded and her self-esteem is damaged. His actions reflect poorly on her as a woman. She was not able to keep him from seeking the attention of someone else. She experiences herself as the victim of a heinous act perpetrated against her. She wants to hurt him as he hurt her. She wants revenge. She wants him to suffer as she has suffered. How can she ever forgive him?

Yet, we see that some spouses are able to do just that. They are able to get beyond their personal hurt and see the larger issues that may underlie the transgression of their spouse. Some are able to go so far as to continue the relationship and use the experience to re-build the relationship. In some instances the marriage becomes stronger as the couple faces the various factors that led to the affair.

On the other hand, some spouses can forgive the transgression but are not willing to maintain the relationship. In effect they say, I can forgive you but I am not willing to stay with you. The risk of your doing it again is too great and I am not willing to chance it. Or they say that that while I can forgive you, our relationship will never be the same, so I choose to continue without you.

Forgiveness does not mean that we condone the behavior of the transgressor. It does not mean that what you did to me is all right. Nor does it mean that we will forget what happened. Forgiveness requires that we let go the anger and hurt that we are carrying. If we want to move forward with our life after being betrayed or hurt by someone else, we have to be willing to let go of the resentment, bitterness, hurt, and anger. Forgiveness becomes a choice.

Forgiveness is a choice

Most of us do not think of forgiveness as a choice. When we feel harmed, wounded, betrayed, or damaged we want relief and often we want revenge. Just as revenge is a choice, so is forgiveness. Our initial emotional response does not have to determine our behavior. We have a choice in how we will respond to any circumstance or situation. We can choose to act angrily, we can choose to act sullen; we can choose to withdraw or we can choose to move forward. We can choose to experience ourselves as a victim of an act of betrayal. Or we can choose to see ourselves as a survivor of a betrayal. We can choose to act with vengeance or to act with forgiveness. The call is ours and ours alone.

The problem arises, however, that in our culture to forgive without having received an apology leaves us feel-ing foolish; we end up thinking that the perpetrator is getting away with something. This thought is intolerable. Forgiveness is deemed to be more closely allied to weakness than to strength. Hence, we excuse ourselves for not being more forgiving rather than aspiring to a higher standard. We accept holding the grudge, holding the anger, holding the resentment, as if it were more noble than forgiving.

What does holding on to resentment, hurt and anger toward someone who has transgressed against us do to us? Where does it leave us? What happens over time? Harboring anger, resentment and hurt often leads to depression, insomnia, emotional constriction, distrust, physical complaints (e.g., ulcers, insomnia, headaches, muscle pain, lethargy, etc.), brooding, dysphoria, to mention a few of the consequences. Holding onto resent-ments and anger takes psychological energy away from more creative pursuits. Over time, it can emotionally deplete us. Yet we often continue to suffer because we believe that if we forgive the offender, he or she is get-ting away with something and is not being punished. We believe that every crime deserves a punishment. More often, however, we pay a greater price for holding onto the resentment than the person who committed the offense will ever pay. We continue to suffer while the other person goes on with his or her life. We lock ourselves in the time period that the betrayal occurred, e.g., the spouse who continues to relive the day he learned that his wife was had an affair.

When we are harmed by someone, we feel vulnerable. We recognize that we are exposed to the vagaries of life and the whims of circumstances. We are confronted with our finitetude and often our mortality. Thus feeling so vulnerable, we seek to re-establish a sense of power and control. With retribution, vengeance, or some form of reprisal, we can establish ourselves as powerful, if only for a moment. We can temporarily suspend the truth of our own vulnerability. In order to truly forgive we must come to terms with our own vulnerability and our mortality. We must come to terms with the existential truth that we live in a contingent world, where things happen, often for no apparent reason. And we often are hurt by these events. Nothing we can do can change the events; nothing we can do can leave us less vulnerable. When we sentence to death the Timothy McVeighs of the world, we have the illusion that somehow we have made ourselves less vulnerable, at least to him. However, our vulnerability continues to exist. Another bomber, another sniper, another terrorist, and another betrayer lurks just around the corner. When we kill McVeigh we believe that we have increased our safety. Such an experience of safety, however, is both temporary and illusionary.

By letting go of the anger, hurt and resentment, we free ourselves to move beyond our pain. We learn that we can survive a betrayal; we learn that we can heal. However, there can be no healing if we do not forgive. We only make the wounds deeper and create emotional scarring. In short, there is no payoff for not forgiving.

Some people hold on to their anger and resentment lest they forget the event, especially if it were perpetrated against a loved one. Let’s take the example of someone whose spouse was murdered. The surviving spouse may be loath to forgive the killer for fear that they would forget the deceased spouse or even be disloyal to the memory of the deceased. They hold on to the hatred as a self-inflicted punishment for surviving.

Forgiving does not mean one forgets. It does not mean condoning an action. It only means letting go of the past and deciding that one wants to transcend the tragedy and celebrate living by moving ahead rather than remaining in the past. If I forgive someone who has betrayed me, murdered my spouse, raped my daughter, it is because I have made the decision to honor a higher sense of self that refuses to remain stuck in a circumstance over which I have no control. The event happened. I cannot change that. I cannot undo it. I can only decide how I choose to behave and whether to move forward with my life. My future actions will determine how I honor the memory of those harmed, not how long I can hold to the anger, resentment and bitterness of the past.

How do we forgive?

Forgiveness is both a value and a process. We aspire to be a forgiving person. To honor this value we must learn to forgive. Is it something we can train ourselves to do? It is easy to forgive someone if they step on our toe or even dent our car. It is relatively easy to forgive an accident. How does one forgive an act of malfea-sance? A violation of a contract? A betrayal in a relationship? How does one forgive an act of intentional harm? How does one forgive a rapist, a murderer, a serial killer, an Oklahoma bomber, an Adolph Hitler?

If we find a method for learning how to forgive, it must be applicable for a variety of circumstances along the dimension of inflicted harm, whether by accident or by design. I do not purport to have discovered an absolute, iron clad system for learning how to forgive. I do believe, however, that we can train ourselves to forgive and to become a forgiving person. I believe that forgiveness can be taught and practiced. I further believe that forgiveness ought to be a central value in our lives, along with such values as honesty, integrity, loyalty, kindness, generosity, civility, to mention but a few. And just as we must practice these other values and honor them in our daily lives, we should practice forgiveness.

We would begin by practicing forgiving folks who may have transgressed against us in minor ways and work up to forgiving more difficult acts of hurt and betrayal. Forgiveness is a process of letting go of resentments and emotional hurts inflicted by others. It is about making a decision not to dwell on the past, incorporating forgiveness as a part of our value system, and honoring that value by acting in ways that moves us toward that higher self to which we aspire. The following are some steps that may assist in this process:

• Make a conscious decision that harboring resentments over past hurt only does you harm. You must be able to understand that there is no value to maintaining a resentful, angry position. In other words, it does not serve you.
• Frame forgiveness as a strength, rather than a weakness. Once you understand that forgiveness facili-tates growth and represents a commitment to embrace life, it will be easier for you to let go of resent-ment and anger.
• Develop a vision or image of yourself as a forgiving person rather than an angry, resentful person. You cannot be both forgiving and resentful at the same time. These two attributes are mutually exclusive. To the extent that you hold onto resentment, you become less forgiving, and vice versa. Commit to the ideal of forgiveness. Imagine yourself being the person you want to be. Picture various scenarios and imagine how this forgiving person would deal with them.
• For dealing with a specific hurt inflicted by someone, Dr. Everett Worthington, Jr. suggests “recall the hurt as objectively as possible. Don't rail against the person who hurt you, waste time wishing for an apology that will never be offered, or dwell on your victimization. Instead, admit that a wrong was done to you and set your sights on its repair.”
• Dr. Worthington suggests that you “commit to forgive. When you forgive, you can eventually doubt that you have forgiven. When people remember a previous injury or offense, they often interpret it as evidence that they must not have forgiven. If you make your forgiveness tangible, you are less likely to doubt it later. Tell a friend, partner, or counselor that you have forgiven the person who hurt you. Write a "certificate of forgiveness," stating that you have, as of today, forgiven.” Remember, forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It means letting go of the pain, anger, and resentment associated with the event or memory.

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This essay is abstracted from Dr. Dreyfus's book, Keeping Your Sanity (In an Insane World), 2004, Xlibris.  http://www.keepingyoursanity.com/