Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

Personally, I'm kind of middle of the road on forgiveness. I definitely don't shy away from forgiving people e.g. "You will never earn my forgiveness!" But, I'm also not prone to going out of my way to forgive people e.g. "I'm forgiving you for my sake!"

At the same time, I'm probably different than a lot of people because there isn't a lot I won't forgive. Some things that people deem unforgivable don't even register to me as something that would require a ton of energy to forgive. For example, the ever-dreaded cheating thing doesn't bother me at all. My thoughts are that I don't own anyone else's body. I don't deserve their sole affection. If I earn it, that's great, but I've never been devastated in that regard. I do what I want and I fully expect others to do the same.

The only things that register to me as something that I can choose to forgive or not are heinous acts and acts of complete indifference. I'll fully admit, I'll forgive someone for a horrible action before I'll forgive someone for disregarding me entirely. Maybe it's because I have borderline personality disorder, but if I feel like someone discarded me in any way, that's a tough one for me to forgive.

It's not impossible or unheard of for me to forgive those actions (or lack of actions) though. There of course is a certain criteria that has to be met before I'll forgive someone. First of all, if the person doesn't bring it to my attention, I'm not going to forgive them because forgiving them isn't going to be a thought that crosses my mind. I'm just going to discard them in return and that will be the end of us knowing each other, unless they pop up later.

Second, a person has to demonstrate that they know what they did was unacceptable. I don't even want an excuse or explanation... just, "Yeah, Charlie, I fucked up."

And then they need to actually let me know that they're seeking forgiveness. Saying you fucked up is cool. I mean, acknowledging that you did something wrong is necessary. But then you actually have to take it a step further and have the part where you apologize, and tell me what you've been doing to correct your behavior or what you're going to do in the future to correct it.

If those three things are done (seek me out, acknowledge mistake, explain personal improvement goals), I'll pretty much forgive most things. And not in an "I secretly still hate you" kind of way, but in a clean slate kind of way.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes, I've applied this to situations where someone did something completely horrendous/illegal/traumatizing.

Do they deserve it? Nah. But then again, none of us ever deserve anything, in my opinion.

Best,
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