2). After reading Chapter 10 in its entirety, answer the following question: Is there an event in your life that you find difficult to forgive? What is it? What makes it so difficult to forgive the other person? If you are not experiencing a difficult event now, describe a past event that you have found difficult to forgive.
I feel like this question can be directly related to the question we had a couple weeks ago about trust and if we ever found it difficult to trust someone again. I tend to always forgive people, especially for something that was completely an accident. One thing I always say is that I will forgive but will not forget. I have a great memory and I definitely use it. I always forgive people but if it they did something bad then it is hard to forget what they have done. For example (same example as my trust post), when I was younger, I had a boyfriend who cheated on me. I quickly forgave him but it was hard to forget what he had done. Every time he went out I was skeptical that he was doing something that he wasn’t supposed to. So while I forgave him, I lost a bit of trust in him.
Hello, Bianca!
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% with your post, and I tend to react the same way. I have had many instances of forgiving someone for their relational transgression(s), but I find it incredibly hard to forget and let go. I also have a great memory, and I use it all the time. I have had boyfriends act in shady ways, and I would always question where they were and what they were doing just based on their prior actions in our relationship, even if I had forgiven them. I think cheating is especially hard, as the book mentions, because it defies core relational rules and breaks the trust. Romantic relationships require a lot of investment, which makes the tough situations even more painful and hard to get over.
I found a lot of connections between trust and forgiveness too. I ended up writing about the same situation in both posts. Like you, it was about a boyfriend who cheated on me. The definition of forgiveness from this chapter really clarified the differences between forgiveness and reconciliation for me. I think that the key factor in being able to move from one to the other is trust. If we can’t rebuild trust, how can we really reconcile? Continuing a relationship with someone you can’t trust is a losing situation for sure.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s a wise policy to forgive but not forget. But we also can’t hold on to the violations, big or small, if they’re just going to be brought back up at every turn. I hope this doesn’t sound like a lecture, since I know that you said you were constantly skeptical of your boyfriend. But it also sounds like you’re no longer in that relationship which suggests that the strain of that constant distrust was likely too much for the relationship to bear. In my experience, the worst thing I ever do in relationships is bring up past hurts that are supposedly forgiven. Remembering the hurts helps us protect ourselves - but we run the risk of letting it come between us too.