How Can I Forgive You? Part 9

Listening, you help her heal and feel human again. "We listen one another into speech," notes Harvard psychologist Judith Jordan.

"We're listened into being."16 Listening is one of the most powerful healing gestures you can make. It cuts through the hurt party's sense of denigration and isolation and encourages her to reattach to you. Your being fully present to validate her pain is what trauma expert Mary Jo Barrett calls "compa.s.sionate witnessing." This exchange in which she entrusts you with her feelings, and you are there for her, warmly, attentively, knocks down the wall between you and opens the way to forgiveness.

Critical Task #3: Apologize - genuinely, non-defensively, responsibly. non-defensively, responsibly.

An apology is more than a simple "I'm sorry," though that's a fine way to begin. It's also a way of saying that you take responsibility for your actions, care deeply about the pain you caused, and intend never to repeat the transgression.

I'd like to think, or perhaps I'd like you to think, that there aren't many times when I need to ask others to forgive me. But let's be real. Here's one of them. After verbally a.s.saulting my husband, I framed him as the problem, then struggled to take owners.h.i.+p of my own inappropriate rage and the mess I alone had created.

After my mother died, I moved my father from Florida to Connecticut so that he would be closer to the rest of the family. It was an exhausting project, filled with a million details-researching independent living facilities, transferring medical records, closing down his condominium, furnis.h.i.+ng his new apartment. By the time I flew him back to Connecticut, I was totally fried. My husband, Michael, Genuine Forgiveness 143.

picked us up at the airport and brought us to Dad's new home.

Finally, everything seemed to be in place. But just before we said good night, Michael uncorked a bottle of red wine for a welcome toast and splashed it across everything I had set up on the kitchen counters-the medication charts, the new food, the clean utensils.

To be honest, I decompensated and went for the kill: "How could you be so stupid? It was so obvious that this would happen!" and on and on. Not my finest hour. Dad and Mike stared at me in silence, appalled.

Did I fall apart because of the stress of the move? I was so anxious about relocating Dad, still shocked at the loss of my mother, so bone-tired from the entire ordeal. Did I fall apart because I am who I am-a woman with a deep-seated need for everything to be perfect? Should I blame my early childhood experience as a caretaker, as an overly responsible person who always took on too much? Does it matter?

It does. As much as I wanted to make excuses for myself and blame Mike for my reaction, I knew this was cowardly and false. I finally mustered up enough inner strength to approach these two profoundly important men in my life. "I want to apologize for my behavior," I said sheepishly. "I know, Mike, you were just trying to be helpful and sweet. I acted terribly and I'm ashamed of myself. I'm sorry."

Lest I sound too mature, reasonable, and integrated, let me admit how hard it was for me to say these words. Certainly, my demonic behavior contradicted my "official" story of myself as a controlled, sensitive psychologist and forgiveness expert. But I knew in my heart that if I blundered recklessly and simply let myself off the hook, I didn't deserve forgiveness-from the people I hurt, or from myself.

Why Are Apologies So Important?

When you fail to apologize, you're likely to feel the way I felt about myself-crummy. You usually know when you've wronged someone and have to live with that knowledge. If you try to minimize 144 or dismiss it, you seal in your guilt. Apologize, and you begin to recreate yourself, restore your self-respect, and repair the tear within. A reintegration takes place. You know you did wrong. You know you can do better.

Your apology conveys respect for the person you harmed- another precondition of forgiveness. You admit that she deserved better and that you crossed a line. This admission humbles you, elevates her, and restores a measure of equilibrium.

Your apology may help to reconnect the two of you. When you come clean, you not only disarm her and allow her to feel more kindly toward you; you clear your own conscience and are more likely to allow yourself to reattach to her. As Beverly Engel points out, "Knowing we have wronged someone may cause us to distance ourselves from the person, but once we have apologized we feel free to be vulnerable and intimate."17 What Makes for a Good Apology?

To make a good apology, I recommend the following seven guidelines: Guideline 1: Take responsibility for the damage you caused.

Behind every injury is an injurer. For your apology to take hold, you must acknowledge your role: "I am the perpetrator. I did this to you." As Beverly Flanigan, author of Forgiving the Unforgivable, Forgiving the Unforgivable, writes, "Someone is wrong. Someone must be identified. Then someone can be forgiven."18 writes, "Someone is wrong. Someone must be identified. Then someone can be forgiven."18 At a memorial to 1,600 Jews ma.s.sacred in Poland during World War Two, a monument was unveiled that read, "To the memory of Jews from Jedwabne and the surrounding area, men, women and children, inhabitants of this land, who were murdered and burned alive on this spot on July 10, 1941." Though Poland's president publicly asked for pardon in his own name and "in the name of those Polish people whose consciences are shocked by this crime," many Jewish leaders and sym-pathizers were angry that the inscription did not explicitly blame the Polish townspeople.19 Nowhere did it say, "We did this."

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As part of her healing process, the injured party needs to a.s.sign blame and to have you, the offender, accept culpability. An effective apology, therefore, is not just some vague reference to the fact that someone, somehow got hurt, but a pointed acknowledgment that "I wronged you, and for that I'm sorry."

Guideline 2: Make your apology personal.

The most effective apology is exquisitely personal. It's not just an admission that "I did something wrong." It's an admission that "I wronged you you. I did this to you you." What helps the hurt party heal and move the forgiveness process forward is not just that you care about violating your own own standard of conduct but that you care about having violated standard of conduct but that you care about having violated her her.

When Jane discovered that her husband had slept with her unmarried half-sister Ellen, Jane confronted her. "I think about it every day," Ellen admitted. "I don't like to-it doesn't fit my idea of myself. But I have to face what I did."

Jane listened to Ellen's confession but remained angry and unnerved. She soon realized why. "I don't care if Ellen feels bad about herself or believes she broke some personal code of honor,"

Jane told me. "So what if she let herself down? What I want to know is whether she is upset for me. me. Does she care what she did Does she care what she did to me to me?"

Jane wrote Ellen a letter, asking her to address this issue. Ellen never replied, and Jane never forgave her.

A sixty-two-year-old patient, Roy, offers another good example of what an effective apology entails. When he confessed to his wife that he was a s.e.x addict and had been seeing other women for more than fifteen years, he explained that he had been s.e.xually abused as a child. "I've suffered, too," he told her.

His wife was spectacularly unmoved. "His apology has more to do with his pain than mine," she told me. "He hurts for himself, not for me."

There are times when you may not understand the deeply personal impact of your defense. To flesh this out, you could say to the 146 hurt party something as simple as, "I'd like to understand how I may have reopened old wounds, and apologize to you. Can you help me?"

Jack, a forty-year-old electrician, tried to follow this advice when he told his wife that he had been cheating on her during her last month of pregnancy. First, he encouraged her to talk out her pain and took in everything she had to say. Then he apologized, mirroring back to her what she needed him to grasp: "I want to apologize for hurting you so terribly, and violating you in ways in which you were already vulnerable," he told her in my office. "I understand that when I cheated on you during your pregnancy, you felt trapped, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go, which was exactly how your parents made you feel when you were a kid and they abandoned you. I abandoned you in the same way. You thought you could count on me, but all I've done is reinforce your belief that no one is there for you."

Jack's willingness to get inside his wife's experience and see how his behavior added yet another layer of emotional scar tissue to her already damaged self opened her to the possibility of forgiveness.

His personal apology was a beginning.

Guideline 3: Make your apology specific.

When you apologize, don't just say, "I'm sorry." You need to capture exactly what you're sorry for exactly what you're sorry for. You need to describe not just the broad brushstrokes of the injury but the fine details. You need to be boldly concrete, apologizing not only for hurting someone but for precisely how how you hurt her. Only then will she trust that you appreciate the harm you caused her and will never cross that line again. you hurt her. Only then will she trust that you appreciate the harm you caused her and will never cross that line again.

I suggest, particularly to those of you who have injured your life partner or someone with whom you have a meaningful past, that you try to list everything you have done to hurt her over the years- not just the single, obvious, mega-wound you just inflicted.

When Amy, a fifty-two-year-old hair stylist, apologized to her husband for being unfaithful, she did not simply say, "I'm sorry I had an affair." She tried to convey how her affair had devastated him and what exactly she was sorry for. She also thought beyond the affair to Genuine Forgiveness 147.

other ways in which she may have injured him. "There are times over the past thirty years when I've treated you in totally indefensi-ble ways," she began. Then she listed the behaviors she was sorry for: * I exposed you to the risk of s.e.xually-transmitted diseases each time I slept with someone else.

* I kept secrets from you and relegated you to the role of an outsider who knew less about me than some stranger.

* I made you doubt yourself and question your place in the world.

* I tarnished many otherwise happy memories of our life together.

* I blamed you when I felt lonely, instead of addressing my own lifelong sense of loneliness.

* I shut you out when I was feeling angry and frustrated about our relations.h.i.+p, instead of talking to you directly about what was bothering me.

* I drank too much and working excessive hours, increasing the distance between us.

* I gave up on our relations.h.i.+p without letting you know, making it impossible for us to work things out together.

Amy's husband, Paul, knew that he wasn't totally innocent-he had abandoned her, too, in his own way. He responded by writing her his own apology. "I want to apologize for not being there for you over the years, and for all the frustration and pain I brought you.

Specifically, I'm sorry for being so concerned about financial security that I ignored the quality of our life together. I was unavailable to you when your sister died. I packed my anger away and got back at you in pa.s.sive-aggressive ways, which made it impossible for you to respond directly to my grievances."

Guideline 4: Make your apology deep.

If you want to be forgiven, you have to cough up the whole wretched truth of what you did. Don't be content with easy admissions; 148 keep sc.r.a.ping away to uncover deeper, darker truths. Let yourself burn with embarra.s.sment, if that fits the bill. As Albert Ellis has been known to advise patients who are engaging in personal growth exercises, "If you're feeling uncomfortable, you're probably doing something right."

It may be helpful to write and rewrite your apology, each draft cutting closer to the unflattering truth. That's what a patient named John did. He began with a superficial note apologizing to his wife for hurting her feelings. Then he tried again. "Over the years, I've spoken to you with contempt," he began. "I've put you down to raise myself up. I've hidden how insecure and unworthy I felt, how afraid I was of losing you or getting close to you. I preyed on your kind soul. I pretended I was superior at your expense. My mother behaved exactly the same way toward my father and me. I hate this in myself."

Here are some other examples of effective apologies: * A mother tells her daughter, "I never made you feel that you were OK, that you were great just the way you were. I was always trying to change you, to make you more feminine, more like your sister, to get you to live up to my image of the proper little girl. I don't know why I felt so anxious, why I doubted you. But this is my issue, not yours."

* A daughter tells her mother, "Growing up, I was tough on you and angry that you seemed so preoccupied. Now that I have my own child, I see how hard it is to manage a home and a job and still be tuned into your kids' feelings. With Dad drinking and providing no support, I don't know how you held it all together. I thought only about myself. It never occurred to me to think about you."

* One friend tells another: "I've said small, mean things to you, like, 'Not everyone is born with a million dollars in the bank.'

I hate to admit this, but there are times when I feel jealous of you. Your life seems so easy compared with mine."

* A brother apologizes to his sister, "I let you take care of Dad and do nothing to help. I pretend I'm busy, but the truth is Genuine Forgiveness 149.

I'm busy doing things for myself. You like to help others, so I let you. I milk this. I don't have to be you, but it's not fair for me to do so little."

Guideline 5: Make your apology heartfelt.

Sometimes people apologize well, but for selfish reasons-to rid themselves of guilt, to reduce conflict and make their lives easier, to show themselves off to G.o.d or friends as decent human beings.

Need I say that your apology is likely to fall on deaf ears if your heart isn't in the right place? Anyone can be trained to utter polished words of remorse. The challenge is to experience and convey "a transformation of heart."20 For you to be genuinely forgiven, your remorse must be real, profound, enduring.

My mentor Rabbi Israel Stein likes to remind his congregation during Yom Kippur, the High Holy Days of the Jewish people, that G.o.d is not impressed with our commitment to fasting. Fasting is by itself just rote behavior, he points out. But fasting done with heart has meaning and purpose. It agitates the soul. It inspires us to reach out to those whom we have wronged. During the services for the Days of Atonement, a ram's horn-a shofar-is blown in the syna-gogue to awaken the congregants from their slumber, to stir their hearts. "G.o.d," Rabbi Stein a.s.serts, "is not interested in our rituals.

He is interested in our humanity."

How do you convey a heartfelt apology? One way is through a tone of voice that is gentle, warm, and earnest. Another is through appropriate body language. When people apologize to each other in my office, I ask them to put down whatever they're holding, face each other, uncross their arms, and look into each other's eyes. If they're sitting, I suggest they both uncross their legs and lean toward each other. I then coach the offender to speak very slowly, letting the injured party feel the sincerity and absorb the truth of his words.

In s.e.x, Love, and Violence: Strategies for Transformation, s.e.x, Love, and Violence: Strategies for Transformation, family therapist Cloe Madanes requires anyone who has s.e.xually abused his victim to express repentance on his knees before her.21 Whether you prostrate yourself or not, genuine humility must lie at the core of your 150 family therapist Cloe Madanes requires anyone who has s.e.xually abused his victim to express repentance on his knees before her.21 Whether you prostrate yourself or not, genuine humility must lie at the core of your 150 apology. Only when you strip away your sense of self-importance and shed your defensive tactics can you begin to convince the injured person that you're truly sorry.

Marie's father failed to do this. When she was thirty-five, she received a letter from him telling her that he was dying and that he wanted to apologize in person for his behavior over the years. "I want you to know I'm sorry for everything I did to hurt you," he wrote. "Now they've given me two months to live, and it would give me great peace of mind if you forgave me before I died."

Marie remembered that, when she was five, her mother had kicked her father out of the house for denying his alcohol problem and ignoring his family. "All those years he never sent cards, gifts, or child-support payments," Marie told me. "Now he wants me to save his soul."

The father's bland, blanket apology did nothing to earn him a place in his daughter's heart. She needed to hear him voice a profound sadness for the impact his behavior had had on her, but all she heard was his fear of h.e.l.l.

How sad is this story? Who is to say that his contrition wasn't real-that with different words he might not have healed them both? But hearing nothing more than a perfunctory "I'm sorry" reinforced Marie's a.s.sumption that his apology was merely expedient- a way to win himself a place at G.o.d's table. She never spoke to him again.

Guideline 6. Make your apology clean.

The most effective apologies are pure, straightforward, and uncomplicated, with no buts, buts, no fancy embellishments, or caveats. no fancy embellishments, or caveats.

Qualified apologies tend to backfire. When you try to pa.s.s off your misconduct as a mistake, an insignificant event, an understandable reaction to her misbehavior, the person you hurt is likely to feel even more battered and enraged than before. It's up to her to see the injury in a softer light, not you.

At times like these, it helps to remember that when you Genuine Forgiveness 151.

acknowledge blame, the hurt person is more likely to acknowledge hers, too. That's what happened with Stan and Naomi.

After living with his wife's alcoholism for twenty-six years, Stan got involved with another woman. "I felt unloved and dismissed long enough," he told me. "Naomi's drinking makes her mean, and the way she carries on in public embarra.s.ses me."

Naomi didn't blame Stan for causing her alcohol problem-she had drunk too much even in college-but he traveled a lot, entertaining j.a.panese clients in Tokyo strip bars, and her loneliness fed her addiction. She, too, felt unloved and abandoned.

When Stan came clean about his affair, the couple's relations.h.i.+p quickly unraveled. They tried to rebuild it. Privately, they knew they had wronged each other, but all they did was trade accusations. "I had an affair because you were off in a world of your own and refused to change," Stan told her. Naomi shot back, "I drink to drown out my loneliness because you're never there for me. You're not perfect either."

I suggested that they write apologies to each other at home simultaneously, then come to our next session prepared to read them. I encouraged them to overcome their "I need you to lick my wounds before I lick yours" approach to relations.h.i.+ps and take turns acknowledging blame.

What they wrote served as a stepping-stone to forgiveness. Stan began, "I apologize for making you feel insecure and lonely, and for getting back at you by staying away. I'm sorry for managing my hurt by hurting you back rather than by doing something constructive like getting into therapy or Al-Anon."

Naomi wrote, "I'm sorry for making you feel so desperate that you had to turn to someone outside our marriage to be heard, rather than to me. I'm sorry for ignoring my drinking problem, and for compromising you publicly."

What this couple learned is that you can't accuse someone and apologize to him at the same time, just as you can't give and take with the same hand at the same time. One gesture cancels out the 152 other. The two of you must put your recriminations aside and take turns, making full apologies and giving them a chance to sink in.

Guideline 7. Apologize repeatedly.

For "surface wounds," a single apology may be enough to win forgiveness. But for more serious injuries, you may need to apologize again and again, particularly if you hope to reconcile. As a patient of mine told her husband after she caught him secretly running up debts on their credit cards, "I don't want you to say you're sorry. I want you to be sorrowful with me. I want you to carry the sorrow the way I carry the sorrow, to walk the walk with me every day."

Don't wait for the perfect or right time to apologize. Make time.

And don't wait until you've found the magic words; you can revise or add to them later.

An Apolog y Goes Beyond a Confession.

When you confess, you admit the wrong you did. When you apologize, you express remorse for the wrong you did. Each response has its value. A confession is a statement of fact: "As a priest I molested young boys." "As a father, I slapped my children with a belt that left welts on their bodies and souls." "As a wife, I pulled away from you s.e.xually and made you feel inadequate." An apology, in contrast, is a feeling statement. It goes beyond the facts and reveals how you feel about them.

Confession has value because it shows that you have the insight and moral fiber to distinguish right from wrong. Apology goes further because it shows that you have the courage and humility to be judged by the person you wronged. "Confession lays bare your limitations," Beverly Flanigan points out. "Apology places those limitations in another's hands to be accepted or rejected."22 Sometimes the hurt party doesn't know you wronged her until you own up to it. This revelation gives her power and status. Suddenly she's as close to the truth as you are. As Frank Pittman once said, the issue "isn't whom you lie with. It's whom you lie to."23 The person you're sharing secrets with is the one with whom you share a closer bond.

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Both confession and apology can reduce shame, foster dialogue, and repair the connection between you. But only an apology, which shows regard for the hurt party's feelings, can earn forgiveness.

The limitations of confession alone, without apologies, are ill.u.s.trated in this story of Connie and her fiance, Martin. After an eight-month engagement, she asked him to attend "Pre-Cana" cla.s.ses with her. These cla.s.ses were organized by her church to help couples resolve conflict and find their way back to each other and to G.o.d. Martin hesitated. "I don't know," he said. "They ask lots of questions."

"What are you hiding from me?" Connie wanted to know.

Martin finally confessed that he had a history of genital warts.

He had knowingly exposed her to this contagious disease, for which he was treating himself secretly with nitrogen hydroxide.

Though shocked, Connie was grateful to know the truth. But she needed to find out how he felt about what he had done and pressed him to talk about his feelings. Martin began to cry. "I was ashamed to tell you and afraid you wouldn't want to marry me if you knew the truth," he said. "I'm so sorry I kept such an important secret from you. I was incredibly selfish. I put you physically at risk.

I crippled your ability to trust me in the future. You're probably wondering what else I'm keeping from you, who I am deep down inside, what our relations.h.i.+p is really about."

Martin's confession gave Connie information. His apology gave the relations.h.i.+p a chance to live.

Your Apology Needs to Go Beyond an Expression of Regret.

An expression of regret is intrapersonal intrapersonal -something you offer by and for yourself. It reveals how you feel about your behavior, not how you feel about the person you harmed. It says, "I'm sorry for what I did. It probably wasn't worth the consequences I suffered." It doesn't necessarily acknowledge that you care about her, or even that you believe what you did was wrong. It may be nothing more than an expression of displeasure that you stirred up trouble for yourself and made your life more complicated. An apology, in contrast, is -something you offer by and for yourself. It reveals how you feel about your behavior, not how you feel about the person you harmed. It says, "I'm sorry for what I did. It probably wasn't worth the consequences I suffered." It doesn't necessarily acknowledge that you care about her, or even that you believe what you did was wrong. It may be nothing more than an expression of displeasure that you stirred up trouble for yourself and made your life more complicated. An apology, in contrast, is interpersonal interpersonal. It's all about your feelings toward the person you 154 harmed. It conveys, sometimes explicitly, your promise never to injure her again.

In April 2001, an American reconnaissance plane flew into Chinese airs.p.a.ce and collided with a Chinese military jet. President Bush publicly expressed regret for the loss of a Chinese airman. Secretary of State Powell eventually used the word "sorry," but the word was translated into a Chinese term that carried no acknowledgment of guilt. These linguistic nuances ill.u.s.trate the delicate art of forgiving.

The Chinese held out until the American administration used a word implying that "the speaker acknowledges wrongdoing."24 An Apolog y Needs to Go Beyond "Icing on a Rancid Cake."

When you hurt someone, you may want to show remorse by doing nice things for her. But these loving behaviors, no matter how sincere, cannot subst.i.tute for a straightforward, heartfelt apology. As collateral gifts, they may convey an honest wish to make up, but they're not enough to earn forgiveness. I call these indirect offerings icing on a rancid cake. icing on a rancid cake.

The mother of one of my patients, David, tried to gain her son's forgiveness in the final days of her life. While selling her house the year before, she had accused him of stealing from her. Insulted and demeaned, he had hired an accountant and proved that she, in fact, owed him more than $100,000. Not only did she not apologize, she taunted him with her favorite line: "Muhammad never goes to the mountain; the mountain comes to Muhammad." A few months later, in a bid for his affection, she offered him her crystal gla.s.s-ware-"icing on a rancid cake."