How Can I Forgive You? Part 6

They're all lucky you're in their life. I'm sorry for making you feel I want you to suffer. You've been a wonderful daughter. I love you and wish you great happiness.'"

Kim turned to me and added, "In my heart I'd like to forgive my mother, but I can't."

I told her, "I understand your response. It makes sense to me.

Realistically, when someone knowingly hurts you and fails to show even the slightest sign of discomfort or remorse, the idea of forgiving him seems excessively generous. There's another healthy alternative, though, and that's Acceptance. Perhaps that's what you're searching for. The cure lies not in your forgiving your mother, a woman who couldn't earn forgiveness. Nor is it in your imagining her to be more than she was. The cure comes when you learn to live with her failings and relieve the ache in your heart."

I stayed in touch with Kim and over time encouraged her to: * control her obsession with the damage her mother had done to her; * make room for simultaneous feelings of bitterness and love; * release herself from any mandate to forgive her mother, and learn to accept her instead; * give voice to her injury and allow her own version of the truth; * refuse to let the feelings her mother generated in her- shame, sadness-undermine her self-esteem; Acceptance 99.* feel compa.s.sion for herself for all she has endured; * realize that she didn't deserve to be rejected by her mother; * accept that what her mother offered her was all she had to give; and * try to remember what she loved in her mother (such as taking Kim's kids to the movies and doing arts and crafts projects with them when Kim was at work).

Through her unilateral efforts, Kim healed herself and learned to accept her mother. She also came to terms with the limitations of their relations.h.i.+p in a way that felt comfortable and honest, while remembering her mother in the best possible light.

2. Acceptance Without Reconciliation When the Offender Won't Apologize The offender may want an ongoing relations.h.i.+p. But if he refuses to earn forgiveness, you may choose to accept him and break off all contact, at least until he makes amends. I encourage you to consider this option. When you refuse to either reconcile or or to accept him, you poison yourself with hatred and end up having more of a relations.h.i.+p with him than you care to admit, even if you never cross paths again. Acceptance lets you restore your balance and maintain your integrity-without him. Acceptance lets you heal- to accept him, you poison yourself with hatred and end up having more of a relations.h.i.+p with him than you care to admit, even if you never cross paths again. Acceptance lets you restore your balance and maintain your integrity-without him. Acceptance lets you heal- without him.

A forty-eight-year-old radiologist, Deirdre, sought to accept her father without reconciling with him, years after the most terrible of violations. While she was at medical school, in her late twenties, she found herself perversely fascinated, almost consumed, by articles about rectal disease. She began to remember her father, a highly regarded pediatrician, treating her for rectal lesions from the earliest age- perhaps four or five. Memories came flooding back of his asking her to bend over the kitchen table, while he inserted himself into her. She knew now, suddenly, absolutely, that even if he hadn't had a.n.a.l s.e.x with her, he must have abused her in some awful way. Why else would he have repeatedly, ritualistically, examined her in that manner?

100.

Deirdre confronted her parents with her traumatic memories, but they denied them emphatically and accused her of lying and maligning them. Several months later they invited her to join them for Thanksgiving. "My parents' response to my disclosure was so sensationally inadequate," Deirdre told me, "that I decided I couldn't live with myself and also have a relations.h.i.+p with them."

A part of Deirdre wanted to crush her parents, as they had crushed her. But she relinquished her need to hurt them, to have them validate her memory or console her, and gave voice to her truth in the following letter.

Gloria and Greg-she refused to call them Mom and Dad- I've been in therapy for two years trying to piece together what happened to me as a child. You tell me you can't apologize for what never happened. But for me not to have my truth acknowledged throws me into a state of confusion and makes me question my sanity and feel even more detestable than you made me feel when you violated me and refused to love and protect me. I can't have a relations.h.i.+p with either of you under these conditions. There is no relations.h.i.+p under these conditions. It doesn't work for me to get together and share good times. So I'd appreciate your respecting my need to seal myself off from you until the time comes when you're ready to admit and make amends for the terrible damage you did. The whole thing is so sad, so evil. I wish that by cutting you out I could cut out the memories. I know that's not possible. They live on inside me. But what I can do is proclaim my truth, respect it, draw a line, and take care of myself by letting only the people I trust into my life. Good-bye.

Deirdre Deirdre's decision not to reconcile with her parents helped her restabilize her world and feel more safe, more cared for, more in control of her destiny. Her decision to accept them allowed her to distinguish herself from how they treated her, and move forward.

101.

Acceptance without reconciliation may also be a sensible option when you're coming to terms with your partner's lover. When I first started to work with people who were recovering from infidelity, I cringed at what they said they needed in order to heal. "I want to go to his girlfriend's office with my four kids, surround her, put my baby on her desk, and say, 'This is the family you destroyed,'" a patient named June told me. "I want to confront her in church, behind the altar with the priest, and let her know she's destroyed my life, and now I intend to destroy hers."

Behind these gothic visions was a need to give voice to her pain-to speak up directly to the person who injured her, to stand tall and declare, "What you did was wrong. My feelings matter.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, I didn't deserve to be treated this way."

What I told June is what I would tell any of you who are thinking of confronting your partner's lover: Don't do anything rash or impulsive. Don't contact her without thinking through what you want to accomplish and how you'll feel days and weeks after you deliver your message. However you choose to communicate-by E-mail, by phone, in a letter, or face-to-face-don't speak up if it's only to elicit a specific response; you can never predict how someone will react. Speak up because you have something that needs to be said. And then, to protect yourself from further pain, think through all the ways in which the lover may respond and how these responses may affect you. Most critically, if you decide to unleash your pain, do so in a way that will allow you to walk away with self-respect.

3. Acceptance with Reconciliation When the Offender Won't Apologize Here are four sensible, healthy reasons why you may decide to accept him and reconcile, even though he refuses to make amends: * You have to interact with him regularly and find that it takes too much energy to remain cold and distant.

102.

* When you act cold toward him, you feel cold inside, alienated both from him and from yourself. The rupture between you compromises the quality of your life. Having no relations.h.i.+p with him feels worse than having some, no matter how limited or superficial.

* You benefit strategically from an ongoing relations.h.i.+p. For example, you choose to get along with your boss to protect your job, even though you may not respect him. Or you remain civil to your former spouse for the sake of your kids.

* You hope to have new, corrective experiences that might repair the relations.h.i.+p.

Melissa, a psychiatrist, struggled to accept and reconcile with her parents for all these reasons. For twenty years they had rejected her as a lesbian and refused to acknowledge her partners.h.i.+p with Leah. Melissa finally decided to confront them on these issues. A number of letters pa.s.sed between them, including this exquisitely sensitive one from Melissa: Dear Mom and Dad, Over the past eighteen years I've been hurt many times by your insistence that I pretend not to be in a lesbian relations.h.i.+p. I have tried to be forgiving and loving, hoping that in time you would become more open-minded. I thought that, as you saw how happy I was and how good my life was, you would gradually respond to me in a warmer, more solicitous, parent-like way. I would never ask you to condone my life if it violated your standards. Your opinion about my relations.h.i.+p is your own business. What I care about is how you treat me.

Your insistence that I pretend to be a single person in your company is not helping. When the two of you say to me, "You won't bend, and we can't either," it's clear that you both feel fully justified in your actions and words, and not at all sorry. I Acceptance 103.

realize now that I can't expect my forgiveness and love to have a healing effect if you don't care how you're hurting me.

Let me tell you how I think our relations.h.i.+p could be much better-without your sacrificing your values, or me, my integrity.

When you say, "We don't like Leah," you tell me you mean you don't like what she represents. From my point of view, this is a polite way of saying you don't like who I am.

It's like saying, "Only if you deny who you are can we tolerate being around you." The reality is that I'm in a partners.h.i.+p with Leah and have been for twenty years. I'm not a single woman. If I had not met Leah, I'd like to think I'd be in a relations.h.i.+p with someone else, and, if so, I'm certain it would be a woman. I am gay. If you can't acknowledge that (you don't need to condone it, just acknowledge it), then it's tough to figure out what kind of relations.h.i.+p we can have.

From my point of view, visits are hard because I know it annoys you for me to mention Leah's name or say anything with the word "we." Can you imagine how restrictive this is for me? Leah and I work together, share the same dreams, the same friends and home. So what can I talk to you about? My brothers? Yes. But I can't talk about myself, not in any natural way. It feels phony telling you about my trips, my work, the things that make me laugh, without mentioning Leah in the same breath. She is central to everything I do. My life would be a sh.e.l.l without the joy we share; you only want to hear about the sh.e.l.l. And that's incredibly sad to me, because I think you'd very much enjoy partic.i.p.ating in our life if you didn't think that meant you were condoning us.

There are millions of parents who don't approve of their children's choice of partners. But they ask about them any-way and try to be cordial to them. If they don't, the families grow apart. I would prefer that didn't happen to us. It already has.

104.

So how could our relations.h.i.+p be better? Here's what I think would help: 1. Acknowledge that I'm in a relations.h.i.+p with Leah. At least when talking with me, but maybe also with your sisters and friends, even your priest. You may get some support. Some people will sympathize with you for having a gay child and see it as a terrible burden. Others will let you know they have gay family members, too, and will talk with you about how they feel. Some may even help you learn to laugh about it, and help you feel less alone.

2. Be courteous to Leah. If she answers the phone, identify yourself, make some cordial, everyday conversation with her ("How's your new job? Is it raining there?"), and then ask if I'm home.

It's been hard for her, too, these past years. She's wanted to send you birthday cards and chat with you on the phone and get to know you a bit. But she knows how you feel about her, and she doesn't want to say something friendly that turns you farther away from her. She doesn't want to upset my relations.h.i.+p with you, so she says nothing, which isn't her nature. It hurts her when you call me at home and she picks up the phone and hears nothing but, "Is Melissa there?" as if she were a person not worthy of a "h.e.l.lo."

3. Understand that when I talk about my life and use the words "we" and "us," these are invitations for you to be part of my adult life. I'd like us to be closer, but it won't happen if I can't be who I am. And an important part of me is we we.

4. Instead of interacting the way we have these past twenty years or so-unsuccessfully, it seems-let's try on a new set of principles. Here's what I propose: 105.

You can try to relax and enjoy yourself with me, whether I'm alone or with Leah. In exchange, I will never interpret your laughter, or any joy we share, as meaning that you condone my relations.h.i.+p with her. I will understand that no matter how good a time we have, and how close we become, you still disapprove of us and believe our relations.h.i.+p is wrong. You won't need to remind me of your disapproval.

You won't have to feel the constant anxiety of parenting me in this domain. We could all just relax and enjoy each other.

I would like to get closer to you. I hope you want to get closer to me, too, and will take my proposal seriously.

Melissa Melissa's parents never replied. You can imagine how deeply their silence cut her. What helped her survive her disappointment and keep her equilibrium was her decision to take control of her life, give up her insistence that they accept her, and work on accepting them.

Here's what she did: * She allowed herself to honor all that she felt-her sadness, her disappointment, her anger-as a legitimate response to her parents' behavior.

* She recognized what it was about her parents' personalities that led them to act the way they did. This prevented her from taking their prejudices and rejection so personally. "My mother doesn't see the necessity of doing anything that doesn't center on her or match her immediate needs," she reminded herself.

"My father avoids conflict and follows her lead."

* She gave up expecting, or yearning for, more than they could give her. "It helps not to expect or feel a need for anything from them," she told me.

* Unwilling to pretend that their rigid behavior didn't matter, she refused to grant them Cheap Forgiveness. Unwilling to 106 spend her life sparring with them, she refused to succ.u.mb to Not Forgiving.

* She worked at limiting her preoccupation with how they hurt her, and actively reached out to others who made her feel loved and respected.

* She gave up her need to forgive her parents, and arrived at the self-affirming position of Acceptance.

Several months after she terminated therapy, Melissa sent me an E-mail, letting me know that she had decided to continue to interact with her parents, even though her contact with them would have to be superficial. "My older brother is mentally handicapped and lives with them," she told me. "If I'm going to keep in touch with him, I need to go through my parents. I'd also like to stay connected to them because it's the morally right thing to do. They're my parents, and I honor them by keeping up with their lives. I believe they should want to keep up with mine, too, but whether they do or not, it's important for me to stay true to the spirit of my own values.

"I still talk to them briefly on the phone every two or three months. I also send them cards, but ones that don't misstate my feelings. For example, I might choose a card that says, 'I wish you a joy-ous day,' rather than 'You're the best mother a daughter could ever have.' It helps me feel good about myself, knowing I haven't been vindictive to them, that I've acted in a congenial way. It also helps to know there are other people in my life who love me. I have rich relations.h.i.+ps with them. I'm nearly fifty. My parents' love is no longer something I require for my happiness. To be honest, I feel at peace with myself. I'm comfortable where I am."

Melissa chose to reconcile with her parents for reasons that served her own strategic interests. Staying in touch allowed her to enjoy the benefits of a relations.h.i.+p with them, while still being true to herself as a benevolent and intelligent human being. As for getting closer to them, it seemed unlikely, but she would see. The door was open.

107.

How Can I Stay Attached to the Offender and Remain True to Myself?

When you have been physically abused, maintaining rigid boundaries between you and the offender makes excellent sense. But after emotional abuse or other nonphysical injuries, your withdrawal may reveal how tied you still are to him-how much you still need him as the object of your fury.

Acceptance lets you remain in a relations.h.i.+p without feeling controlled, inauthentic, or canceled out. This ability to be yourself in the presence of the offender-this "differentiation"27-gives you the freedom to stay physically and emotionally engaged with him because you are no longer defined by his mistreatment of you. Your power comes less from cutting him off than from maintaining a strong independent sense of who you are.28 As e. e. c.u.mmings observed, we can be "both and oneful."

In The Dance of Anger, The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner reminds us that we can stand back from pain without standing back from the person who hurt us.29 Robert Karen suggests that we can be angry "in a warm, creative, connected way," without isolating ourselves or setting barriers. "There are degrees to which you let people back into your life," Harriet Lerner reminds us that we can stand back from pain without standing back from the person who hurt us.29 Robert Karen suggests that we can be angry "in a warm, creative, connected way," without isolating ourselves or setting barriers. "There are degrees to which you let people back into your life,"

Karen says, "and degrees to which you let them back into your heart-which, of course, are not the same thing."30 How Mercy Affects Your Decision to Reconcile Mercy extends a measure of gratuitous good will to the offender that opens the door to reconciliation. Like other gifts of Acceptance, it is granted unilaterally and demands nothing in return.

For some of you, mercy begins with the realization that the two of you share a common humanity-that you are both flawed human beings who are capable of doing stupid, insensitive, shameful things that need to be forgiven. "If I had been exposed to the same damaging experiences, I may have responded in the same despicable way,"

you remind yourself.

Others among you may protest being thrown into the same ket-tle of humanity as the offender. "I could never, ever, do what he did,"

108.

you insist. But you may still want to show mercy as an expression of your wish to live harmoniously with others, and not demand more than a person can give.

Some Relations.h.i.+ps Are More Important to Preserve Than Others Some relations.h.i.+ps matter to us more than others. If your spouse is an alcoholic who refuses to seek help, you may decide to end the marriage and cut him out of your life. But if a sibling has a drinking problem, you may want to maintain ties and work with him to confront his addiction.

A teacher named Gail chose to accept and reconcile with the person who hurt her-her older sister Myra. For Gail, some form of relations.h.i.+p was preferable to none.

"Myra ruined my wedding," Gail told me. "She couldn't have been more sour, more critical, more self-absorbed. I know it's hard for her to be the older sister, thirty-two, and living alone. And you can bet that when she gets married I'll feel like I'm losing her, too.

But she spent the whole day whining about her dress, her table a.s.signment, the salad, everything. Nothing was right or good enough for her. I wanted to tell her, 'Sometimes, Myra, you have to put yourself aside and understand it's not your day. You have to be there for someone else.' That's a concept she never got."

The sisters met a few times to talk through what happened, but the tension between them escalated. When they met at a restaurant, Gail ended up throwing a plate of spaghetti at Myra and storming out. Myra refused to discuss the conflict again, so Gail got into therapy alone and worked on accepting her sister. "I can see how I marginalized Myra at my wedding," she told me. "I could have done more to make her feel special. It helps to remind myself that she was an only child for six years before I came along-my wedding probably stirred up feelings of being displaced again. This doesn't excuse her behavior-she hurt me deeply. But she's my sister. We share a lot of history, and I'm not going to let this incident tear us apart. There are too many advantages to staying in each other's life."

109.

This became apparent many times over the following years, including the day when Gail went into early labor and Myra rushed her to the hospital; and five years later, when their father died, and they grieved his loss together.

Acceptance with reconciliation gives you, as it gave Gail, the freedom to choose a level of intimacy that feels authentic and safe.

You can't get close to someone you don't trust, but you can choose to interact in a circ.u.mscribed way.

That's what friends of mine, Steve and Miriam Carson, chose to do in dealing with their neighbors, the Singers.

Steve and Miriam invested a large chunk of their life savings in a summer house on Cape Cod, with a partial view of the bay. The Singers were planning to raise the south side of their roof and maintain the integrity of the view, but they raised the opposite side instead, leaving the Carsons with nothing to look at but the Singers'

attic window. The Carsons wrote a seething letter to the local zon-ing board. The board sent a copy to the Singers, who seethed back.

The town resolved the issue in favor of the Singers.

Feeling powerless, the Carsons began to obsess, transforming their summer home from a place of refuge into an emotional battle-field where they played out their spiteful ruminations. They rehea.r.s.ed all the nasty, cutting things they could say-how cheap and tasteless the Singers were for planting suburban gra.s.s on the edge of the dunes, how loud and obnoxious their kids were. At night the Carsons stayed up scheming about how to get even.

Over time, however, they began to realize the corrosive impact their behavior was having on themselves. Selfishly, intelligently, they began to accept what they couldn't change. "What do we want to accomplish here?" they asked themselves. "What's important?

Where do we want this to end up?" Self-righteous rage wasn't the answer, they realized; it was poisoning them. So they decided to pack it up and work at making peace. Seeing the conflict through their neighbors' eyes, they slowly, reluctantly accepted the Singers'

right to enhance their home in a way that served them. They believed that the Singers had an exaggerated sense of ent.i.tlement 110 and would never recognize how inflammatory their behavior was, or apologize for it. But they knew that nothing would bring back their view, and that no one was being hurt by their anger but themselves.

So they swallowed their pride and wrote the following letter: Dear Christine and Hank, The fighting that's going on between us is terrible, and Steve and I are very upset about it. The world is such a frightening place these days, it seems sad to be on such terrible terms with our next-door neighbors. The idea of hating each other or not talking to each other for the next twenty years is depressing. We're not happy about having our view blocked, but you had the legal right to do what you wanted.

We may never be best friends, but I'd like to see if we can get rid of the anger between us and make amends. Steve and I will do everything we can.

Within an hour of receiving the letter, the Singers called and said, "We were just about to write the same letter. We want to move on, too."

The Carsons' response to the injury was complicated, as yours is likely to be. Was the letter merely expedient? Strategic? Did they write it only because they believed they had no choice but to make peace? Were they coerced by circ.u.mstance, with no freedom to respond in an honest, authentic way? Did they really accept their neighbors, or did they play the only hand they were dealt, and offer Cheap Forgiveness?

I would argue that in many important ways the Carsons' response was a model of Acceptance. Unlike the conflict-avoider, they actively reached out to their neighbors and dealt with the dispute head-on.

Unlike the self-sacrificer, they allowed themselves to feel angry and violated, saw the Singers as undeserving of forgiveness, and made peace with them to satisfy their own agenda. And unlike the pa.s.sive-aggressor, they saw the conflict from their neighbors' point of view, Acceptance 111.

worked to free themselves from their bitterness, and confronted the Singers in direct and respectful ways in order to reconcile.

Step # 10: You forgive yourself for your failings.

You may ask, "Why should I forgive myself? I did nothing wrong. It was the offender who violated me." But the issue here is not how you wronged him. It's how you may have allowed him him to hurt to hurt you you.

How did you do this? What do you need to forgive yourself for?

In After the Affair, After the Affair, I list a number of injuries that pertain to infidelity,31 including: I list a number of injuries that pertain to infidelity,31 including: * trusting blindly, and ignoring your suspicions; * having such a stunted view of yourself that you feel unent.i.tled to loyalty or love; and * making unfair comparisons by idealizing the lover and degrading yourself.

You may also want to forgive yourself for such self-effacing, self-destructive behaviors as: * dismissing your suffering and failing to appreciate how deeply you've been wounded; * believing you got what you deserved; viewing your mistreatment as punishment, and allowing it to shatter and shame you; * tolerating the offender's abusive behavior; * refusing to forgive yourself, even when you're innocent; * making peace at any cost, no matter how superficial or spuri-ous it may be, or how unsafe or miserable the offender makes you feel; and * losing time and energy engaging in imaginary, vindictive dialogues with him.

For all these self-inflicted wounds you may need to forgive yourself.

112.

How Does Forgiving Yourself Help You Accept the Offender?

When you judge yourself too harshly, you absorb all your criticism and have little or none left for him. Unable to see your role clearly, you cannot see his his clearly. That was Kathy's dilemma. She had been s.e.xually molested by her stepfather but could not accept him until she first forgave herself. clearly. That was Kathy's dilemma. She had been s.e.xually molested by her stepfather but could not accept him until she first forgave herself.

I learned about this twelve-year-old girl from a colleague who was seeing her in family therapy. In an early session, the therapist asked her bluntly, "Do you blame yourself?" Kathy nodded-yes.

"Sometimes I acted too grown up," she said. "I wore a nightgown and looked too pretty. I didn't tell Mom he came into my room at night. He told me if I did, he'd kill us both."

As the therapy progressed, Kathy worked to cut away the excess blame she apportioned to herself and direct it at the person who deserved it. Over time she developed empathy for herself as an unprotected, frightened child, and came to recognize her stepfather's behavior as his responsibility alone.

In a later interview, Kathy showed remarkable strength and clarity. "No matter what I did, I was the child and he was the adult," she said resolutely. "Even if I was pretty, he should have backed off."

As long as Kathy despised herself for what her stepfather had done to her, she could not forgive herself. As long as she framed the injury as her fault alone, she could not properly fault him, free herself to accept him, and move beyond the abuse.