how do i forgive?

[honeybeee]

I have written on here a couple of times and the advice i have been given has really been helpful,i keep saying it to myself to help me along.BUT i know i should forgive my husband for his affair,for us to move on but i need to know HOW do i forgive? i will get days when i can understand the mental state he was in and i feel sorry for him,then i think of all the hurt and upset he has caused me,wondering how could he do that to me after all these years together,thats when i start to feel angry and think that i hate him, even though i know i don't.i feel as if i am taking one step forward and two steps back all the time. i made a new years resolution to not keep going on at him about it but i do. i am still pestering him with questions.he says he has blocked it out of his memory and every time i ask questions it is putting the images back in his head that he doesn't want to remember.how do i get over this and move on? it is driving me crazy.i know if i keep on i am going to push him away and i don't want that. it is just so hard knowing that your marriage isn't what you thought it was and that we will never be the same again.how can it be? i am so sad.:(

[Raymond]

Thanks for being honest and sincere Honeybee about the problems you are having about forgiveness. I assume he is sorry about the affair and is trying to make up the original trust you have.

Truth is things are not going to progress until you get by this one as you probably know. Forgiveness is first of all a decision, but having made that decision the rest of you has to catch up and comply which can take some time. This will involve first of all no playback in your head. You have been hurt it is true but if you are forgiving try and stop yourself playing it back in your head. Refuse the thoughts. It may help verbally to speak out I have forgiven him when this happens.

Forgetting is the next thing which is connected to the first. Although you can never erase the memory you must put it away from your today memory and not keep account of it. This means you must not bring it up and hold it against him. Forgiveness means just that. If we have forgiven we do not bring it up. The sin is covered by your forgiveness. We all need it as we all do wrong things which we are sorry about. I find it helpful to remember the scripture where God says as far as the east is from the west so I will remember their sin no more.

It is alright to bring up constructive questions about the past but you have forgiven the sin itself which means not holding him to account for it any longer. The main beneficiary of the forgiveness is you actually Honeybee. If you release him from any penalty you are free from it as well.
I read the other day in the scripture that love doesn't keep account of wrongs.

Another helpful thing might be to do the opposite thing. For example when you are feeling angry remind yourself you have forgiven him and show him love in some way. This should overcome any negativity in you which is the biggest enemy of forgiveness. I don't under estimate the task you have but the fruit of it will be a stronger marriage.

I hope this helps, but if you want to go into more depth you know where we are.

Raymond

[Ageing Grace]

For example when you are feeling angry remind yourself you have forgiven him and show him love in some way. This should overcome any negativity in you which is the biggest enemy of forgiveness.
Excellent advice :)

Many years ago, a bullying boss literally wrecked my life. I was (and am) very angry about it, but realised that holding on to my distress meant he still had power to control my feelings. In your situation, the thing with the power would not be the person, but the events that happened.

When I next bumped into him, I gave him a big smile, a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was worth it just for the shock on his face! But the point is that, by welcoming him, I showed myself that I have the power to cast a positive glow over my own life. I was not afraid of him!

We are very capable of developing new habits in thought & feeling, as well as in deed. The technical name for it is "neural pathways" - we can create new pathways any time, simply by doing the thing we want to make a habit of. In your case, this would be choosing to show love in place of resentment.

There are other little tricks you can do, which are quite handy in an emergency - say one of the mean thoughts gets into your head, and seems determined to hang around. You can picture the thought as a thing: imagine you put it in a nice box, tie a lovely ribbon bow on it and just leave it there, looking pretty, while you get on with something else (sounds mad, I know, but it's helped me more than once). A similar trick is to imagine that thought linked to you by a sort of shining thread - this represents its presence in your life - get out a beautiful pair of imaginary scissors and cut that thread! If you like, watch the thought float away until it's vanished in the distance.

The main thing, Honeybee, is the choice. You're already doing a pretty good job of showing yourself that you wish to make constructive, loving choices :) These are just a couple of suggestions about how to help yourself along the road to recovery. Good luck!

AG x

[honeybeee]

thankyou both for your advice. it really does help. i know i have to be strong, which is the hardest part.my husband says i am a dweller,which means i always dwell on things, and he says i should just let it go and try and move forward,which is what he is trying to do. he knows what i am like, so why did he do it? he knew it would muck up my life forever.he says he knows he is going to have it rammed down his throat for the next 30 years,and i think that could be true,making both of our lives more miserable. i know what i SHOULD be doing,its the making myself forgive and forget, it is so very,very hard. i don't think i will ever get over this. i hate him for that.but i love him so much too, i wish i did'nt.

[dave123]

Hi Honeybee, Sorry to hear you are really struggling with this choice that you are faced with.

For your sake and your husbands you can't hold this against him forever. Hating what he did and hating him seem to be different things. It sounds like you know what you should be doing, but do you still feel he hasn't been punished enough? or has put it behind him too easily. If so then you need to tell him.

Assuming you both work at it can you imagine being happy together in 1 yr, 5 yrs or 10 yrs?

I hope you can get through this, one way or the other you deserve to be happy and deserve to be loved, trusted and fulfilled.

Take care,

Dave

[Raymond]

Honeybee if you are confessing that you are not going to be able to do it then you surely won't. Even on your post you are in playback mode although you probably know this.

Forgiveness is basically a christian concept. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us? There are some cultures that have revenge going on for decades and even centuries who have no concept of forgiving.

How much forgiveness do you or I need Honeybee? Thats why Jesus went to the cross and paid the price himself. He says to me I paid the price of all your sins can you not forgive others as I have forgiven you?

Sorry to get spiritual but I cannot see any other way around it at the moment. People do make terrible mistakes which they are sorry for. Should they be condemned forever? What helps me is the scripture "Vengeance is mine. I will repay says the Lord" We are not to avenge ourselves. It belongs only unto God. That makes it very easy to forgive in my book.

As I said before Honeybee. You are the one who will be free after it and your marriage will revive. Really you have a choice to either go, or stay and forgive. Living in the middle will be a double minded instability which will not help things.

Raymond

[Ageing Grace]

Hi Honeybee, Sorry to hear you are really struggling with this choice that you are faced with.....
Hating what he did and hating him seem to be different things.

... What Dave said.

What your husband DID was a bad, stupid, mistake.

You love HIM - the man he is - presumably he is not a bad, stupid person. He's a nice person, who once made a bad stupid mistake. So it's okay to love him.

I hope you feel the difference between loving the man, and loathing what he did once?

You don't have to love his mistake, that really would be crazy! When people talk about "forgiving & forgetting", Honeybee, they don't literally mean forget it ever happened.

It's more like if you broke your ankle going downstairs once. After it's healed properly, you never think about it. But you don't completely forget about it; it becomes an experience you had in the past. You may be a little more careful of what you trip over in future (you gained something useful out of the experience), but you don't hate stairs for ever more! If you ever remember it, most likely you'll be thinking what a pain it was to go through, and feel happy that you can get about freely these days.

Like your feelings now, the injury has to heal before you start feeling great about what you've got now. You're the only person who knows how to heal your wounded feelings and I wish I could help you. I guess we'll all have to keep on making suggestions, until one of them clicks with you & helps you get better :)

Anyway. Forget about forgetting, just try & put all your attention on how lovely your life is now. Sending you my best thoughts,
AG

[honeybeee]

thanks guys.
i know it all makes sense what you are saying,and i do hate the deed not the person.my husband cries regularly about it when i am continually questioning him. he is not a wimp, he has only ever cried once or twice in front of me in 23 years before all this happened.i know i am torturing him and i know that his heart is hurting like mine,but i just can't deal with the fact that he went back time and time again.thats what i say to him,how could he not feel guilty after the first time? i think if that was me i would be so shocked as to what i had just done i would make sure it never happened again.i also keep thinking about all the intimate things,like them saying they love each other,him driving 40 minutes from work just to spend 30 minutes with her in her lunch break,him actually thinking about leaving us.he says its like he was a different person then and that i have my old husband back now.he hates her for ruining our lives,even though he says she is the one who seduced him he still takes equall responsibility for what they both done.every time he looks into my eyes and tells me he loves me i just imagine him saying the same to her and that it does'nt mean anything,like it used to.
i know i should forgive, and i have told him i have,but my actions are letting me down.i wish i was'nt so sentimental and stupid. if it was just the once then i would have been able to deal with it a lot better.
i wish i could be like you, raymond, grace and dave.thankyou for trying to help me, maybe i am just a lost cause. i don't mean to sound so self-pitying,i just don't know if i have the strength to go through with this, even though i love him with all of my heart,and want to spend the rest of my life with him . i know i am going to drive him to an early grave if i don't change.i wish i had raymonds faith,it must help you a lot in lifes problems,and you are kind for always answering everyones problems,you all are.thankyou x

[dave123]

Hi Honeybee, please don't be down on yourself. From an outsiders point of view these situations seem a lot simpler and clear cut than they are when you 're in it. You are doing your best as a person and sound like a woman with some real ethics, morals and a desire to be happy with your partner.

I am by no means a man to listen to for advice (goodness knows that's why i'm on here), i'll happily give an opinion and hope that it sparks something useful in someone else. You are neither sentimental or stupid, just very very hurt and disappointed.

You will get through this one way or the other, especially with the help that is available on here, and with a partner who seems sorry and back for sure.

I'm really grateful to to Ray and AG too.

Take care of yourself,

David

[Ageing Grace]

Oh bless you, Honeybee, there's nothing wrong with being sentimental! And your posts show you're far from stupid.

You do seem a bit needy, though. Here's this man throwing good love at you, and you're saying it's not enough. Now, instead of beating yourself up about that (never a good idea, IMO), let's ask why? Why do you care more about 30 minutes with somebody else in the past, than about all the hours he spends with you, now? Why does what he once said to someone else matter more to you, than what he says looking in your eyes today? Why are promises he made to someone else - and didn't keep - more real to you, than the promises he is keeping every single day, with you?

You've told us you love him, he's doing all he can, and you're in a right old state about this. If you could get past it, plainly you would. But you can't (yet), even though you know it's not rational :( So I'm thinking your distress now might be coming from somewhere else, probably something that happened a long time ago which has shown up - as things tend to - because you were upset & vulnerable ... and now won't let go of you.

Honeybee, even if you know what it was that left you feeling like people might always love somebody else more than you, knowing about it doesn't always make things like that go away.

However, if you can spot possible reasons why you are basically over-reacting to the current situation, it would probably be a big help to your husband. It could mean that you're not so much punishing him - it must feel like endless punishment to him! - as being pulled in all directions by some weirdnesses from your past. Not that it makes your feelings any easier to deal with, but - if you think I may have a point - it is something you & he can figure out together, rather than being constantly at odds.

You mentioned Raymond & Dave. Raymond's faith helped him recover from a horrendous past that left him with all sorts of complexes. I only started therapy after my husband left - I was having a pretty bad time all round, but I freaked out so badly about the divorce, it was obvious there was more to it than being upset about the departure of a half-hearted husband! Dave, well he's the Olympic recoverer :D but his thread illustrates how an emotional shock prompted him to overhaul his own 'demons'. I think very many of us, here, have been through a rude awakening of one sort or another!

Maybe none of this has clicked with you at all, in which case it's just another useless suggestion ;) But please give it some thought. Preferably with your husband, it might help him feel worthwhile ...

AG x

[Raymond]

Mmmm. Some interesting points about the past AG.

I was thinking that we tend to be harder and more impatient when we are good at something and someone else is not. Have you noticed in a work situation when you find no trouble with something that it can niggle you a bit when others make a dogs breakfast of it. At those times we are not aware of our own failings.

Maybe you would never have done what he did Honeybee. Maybe that one of the reasons you are tending to be hard on him. He will also have virtues that you might not have. Nothing justifies what he has done, but to continually rub his face in it must be torture. As you say, you have forgiven him, but your behaviour says something else. It is possible that you could end up being the one who is in the wrong in the end as time moves on. Do you want this to happen or do you want a good marriage?

Raymond

[dave123]

I was thinking that we tend to be harder and more impatient when we are good at something and someone else is not. Have you noticed in a work situation when you find no trouble with something that it can niggle you a bit when others make a dogs breakfast of it. At those times we are not aware of our own failings.

...

It is possible that you could end up being the one who is in the wrong in the end as time moves on. Do you want this to happen or do you want a good marriage?



Wow yet again Ray you are spot on. The first bit here has summed up an awful lot of my problems recently and in the past.

Sadly i think you are right on the second part too. Live and let live is probably a good thought in this situation. I have come into contact with people in a "moving on" course who are 2 years down the line and the situation, whatever it may be, still eats them up and owns them. Letting go of a person or a memory is incredibly hard but very necessary. HB i hope you can let go of the past without having to let go of your partner.

Take care,

Dave