24 - The Expectation of Forgiveness

©Miriam A. Mason

[You are hereby forewarned.  RANT ahead.  And yes, I get to be angry if I need to be.]

I find myself being upset and frustrated with the implication of forgiveness somehow being the ultimate goal of anybody who was abused.  People say it's "important to forgive" for all kinds of reasons:

1. Forgiveness means "letting go."
2. Forgiveness is for you, not the other person
3. Forgiveness is the end result of "healing"
4. Forgive and forget is healthy
5. Forgiving makes everyone else feel comfortable (not spoken, but certainly true in action)
6. Forgiveness brings "closure"
7. Forgiveness is "Godly"
8. etc. etc. etc, blah, blah, blah, spew spew spew...

I would argue against this generalized assumption that to forgive is somehow better than to not forgive.  Or to forgive and NOT forget is better than to do neither.

"In my family, the very act of unforgiveness is an extortion of my soul," declares Sandy Katz, a psychotherapist. "It endorses what they did, which was to deny the truth and pressure me to sacrifice myself. For me not to forgive my brother at my parents' behest is my self-affirmation."
Sandy's parents had looked the other way when her violent bully of an older brother thrust a screwdriver up her rectum--even when he set her on fire. 

"Afterward they didn't leave tools or matches lying around, but they never acknowledged what he did to me. He continued to behave this way and they continued to insist that I submit; my mother would say, 'He's just trying to get close to you because he doesn't know how to be friends.' She'd confuse me by saying it was all out of love, and I had no recourse."

~ From "Must You Forgive? Sometimes it's Healthier Not to Forgive," by Jeanne Shafer, June, 2012

To me, forgiveness and all its apparent "reasons" are but excuses to be an apologist for really bad behavior of people who should know so much better.  Forgiving and forgetting is one of the biggest reasons abuse keeps on happening, and we keep finding excuses to allow it to continue.  Forgiving allows us to stop dealing with the problem of the abuser in our society and what continues to produce so many of them.  It makes denial very easy and has an extremely unhealthy subtext in a majority of the cases.

Forgiveness means we don't have to talk about uncomfortable things any more. Are we really that cowardly as a culture?  Apparently so.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/

To me personally, some things are not forgivable, these are my judgments on my terms, not on yours or anybody else's.  Sexual abuse from an adult to a child.  This is not ever forgivable, and should not be forgivable.  The onus should NEVER be on the victim to come to a place of forgiveness.  Ever.  An adult manipulating a child in order to fulfill his own needs, this is unforgivable.  It should not be forgiven.  One adult excusing, being an apologist, ignoring, or denying another adult's abuse of a child, this cannot and should NEVER be forgiven.  That adult is as guilty as the abuser himself.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

The Bottom Line
Forgiveness has to be earned and it’s totally OK not to forgive someone.
There is no ‘should’ – you can choose to forgive or not, whoever is concerned.
There is such a thing as unforgiveable.
Pretending there isn’t is doing ourselves a disservice.

~From "Why Forgiveness is Overrated," by Hannah, Becoming Who You Are, June 2010

I can accept that my abusers were human beings who were fallible and imperfect.  I can accept that my abusers were too stupid and emotionally stunted to really be aware of the damage they did.  I can accept that they made mistakes.  I will never forgive them for those mistakes.  Because what they did was a choice on their part.  A bad horrible choice.  They need to own it.  They never did, therefore, they will never for one second be entitled to any real forgiveness.  They lived and died cowards.

'From what I have gleaned over 56 years of life – and a little less than half of them on radio – it is one of the most overused concepts in dealing with so-called “wrongdoers” or folks who perpetrate outright evil. It depowers the innocent and empowers the not-so-innocent. The basic premise of “forgiveness” is always explained by a listener as a means of “letting go” of the pain and rage so that one can have a serene life. Well, my friends, I have a real problem playing with fire just because it makes one “feel better."
[...]
'She’d spent so many years trying to follow the mantra that you should forgive and will attain peace. To do that she had to deny the reality of the truth, of the damage to her, of the loss of her childhood, of the work she was still doing to recover and survive as a normal person with a life she could enjoy and make meaningful.' ~ "Don't Be So Quick To Forgive," WNT Commentary, 10/14/2003

Forgiving abusers lets them off the hook (and makes everyone else feel comfortable).  Forgetting makes it even more possible for people just like them to justify abusing again ("oh look, she forgave them, so we must be okay, and we can just go on doing it again").

This promotes continued abuse.

No way, José.

Abusers don't need apologists, excusers and acceptance for victimizing another human being.  This also is backwards in our culture.  Forgiveness puts the onus on the person who was attacked, on the innocent, to do all the hard work of owning their pain and then on top of that, forgiving the person who has done ZERO work to change their abuser issues.  Why?

That's just more rape culture for you.  Let's make all the work go onto the victim and then let's push them to forgive the sick fucks who abuse and who do nothing to change it, so our culture can feel nice and comfy, like everything is fine.

It is not fine.

"But before you can forgive somebody, there has to be an acknowledgement of transgression. They have to be able to say to you, you know what? I really screwed up. I did a terrible thing, and I'm so sorry. I don't even know how I can repair it. I mean, at least that's a starting point. But to ask somebody who is the victim of abuse to simply give a carte blanche forgiveness, is a psychologically meaningless and potentially, really harmful task to set them."
~Dr. Richard Friedman, From "Forgiveness Isn't All It's  Cracked Up To Be," interview by Michel Martin, 2013

And, no.  I do not.  I do not forgive.  I will not.  And I am mentally healthier, stronger and more powerful that I do not forgive, or find excuses to permit such terrible behavior, especially so that people around me can feel comfortable.  I was subjected to inhuman treatment but I have forgiven them, so all is well.  No, forgiveness just makes us sicker in many cases.

I am powerful in that I remember and I do not forgive the abuse.  For me, forgiveness means playing right back into my abusers' hands.  There were NO excuses for it.  I speak it out.  I tell the truth of what happened to me.  There is no need to forgive what my family has done (or continues to try to do).  When they own their abuses (hahahaa, that's funny), I'll consider forgiveness then.  But not one nanosecond before they take ownership for their sick and abusive behaviors.

Without demanding that abusers take ownership of their abuses, the abusers just keep on abusing, because all the emphasis for the "work" that must be done post-abuse is on the abused.

What about the next person who the abuser fucks up?  They have to do all the work of owning their pain and then they're also supposed to forgive the sick fuck who abused them, all the while, the abuser never owns one thing he or she did?

To forgive abuse is to excuse it on some level.  There is no need to forgive abuse.

I have a friend who has suffered the most horrific kinds of abuses as a child from the two people she was supposed to be able to trust the most.  She has recently discussed it with close friends.  I have noticed among some of those friends that they are saying to her "you have every right not to forgive or forget."  

WHAT?!?

Whose right what?  

Lack of forgiveness has to be a "right?"  

You know what that really means?  It means, "I have judged what happened to you and have decided that you have a right to feel angry and not forgive."  

Excuse me, but remove yourself from the picture, please, you were NOT there. 

"You have every right not to forgive" is a lovely play on language and logic that people who say it in this way have apparently no clue they are actually saying.  They are adding *their* judgment, *their* assessment on top of the person who has already been victimized.  Saying such things only adds to the victim's burden; it adds in a judgment they don't need to hear.  Adding your own judgment to the mix in an abusee's mind complicates and puts YOUR footprints over their efforts to recover, over their thoughts.  

'Automatic forgiveness, false forgiveness and forgiveness lite, and their counterpart pseudo-contrition, are currently fashionable, and are often mistaken for the real thing. A form of marital counseling its founders have labelled “Forgiveness Therapy” starts with a full (detailed!) confession by the adulterous spouse and immediate assurances of absolution by the cuckolded one.'
~ "Sometimes It's Perfectly OK Not To Forgive," by Jeanne Safer, PhD, The Punch, Australia

Witnessing does NOT equal judgment.  And stating that they have rights to not forgive is judgment NOT validation.  That's a profound error.  You are there to witness for the abused, to validate the abused, not to add your judgment about whether or not they should forgive their abuser. 

Insult to injury.  Wake up and smell the shit, people.  That is not cool.  Take great care in how you say things to someone who has been badly abused.  Many times they are so in the middle of it, they can't tell that you are throwing in your judgment, but you are NOT in the middle of it, and you should be able to tell you are throwing in your judgment about forgiveness.  Keep the forgiveness word (f-word) to yourselves, eh?  If that's YOUR thing, keep it that way.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

There is something *profoundly* anti-victim and pro-abuser about the very phrasing of that terminology and language usage.  As I said, and will say again and again, until it sinks in somewhere, the impetus becomes even more on the victim to not merely struggle through the effort to heal themselves, but then they are also expected to eventually forgive the person who made them go through it all.  As though that is the end result every single time.

Bullshit.  Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

No.  Nobody should HAVE to have a "right" not to forgive. And nobody gets to tell the victim 1) HOW they should feel and 2) what rights YOU think they have to feel or don't have to feel.

Two of the most twisted language examples are this one, and the one that says "I don't blame you for x, y, z."  Another addition of one's judgments into another's perceptions.  These are expressions we should be very aware of and mindful about not employing.

Adding the words and concepts of "blame" and "the right to not forgive" sound weak and mealy mouthed and not authentic and real to me.  That's not empathy, that's sympathy.  These words add in extraneous judgments to an already difficult or impossible situation.  Take yourself OUT of the equation and think about the abuser NOT in relation to your set of parameters.  Open up to what's there, don't add more of your psychological garbage on top of it.  It really isn't that hard to keep your judgments out of it.  Work a little to do that.  The abused are worth it a thousand fold.

Dear world, I puke forgiveness up upon you, so that you may see it for what it really is, more times than not, painful verbal barf - primarily an excuse to let abusers off the hook and put even more responsibility on the abused.

And.

Dear abusers, I will not forgive you.  When you own what you did; when you speak it out loud and take *full* responsibility for doing or allowing it.  When you admit it in front of everybody and you accept all the consequences that come with owning responsibility for harming another person.  Then we'll discuss the possibility of forgiveness.  Until then, you can get bent.  I'm not helping continue your grand self-illusion so that you can abuse again and again.

And, I really wish people would stop using the phrase "you have every right not to x, y and z" for it is a loaded, unthinking, judgmental statement, regardless of any good underlying intentions, and from those who weren't even there.  

You, as a witness for the abused, don't get to make those judgments.  They've never been yours to make.  They belong to the abused and no one else.  

Examine what you say to people, really look at it, before opening your mouth.  When validation and witnessing means including the word "forgive," (whether affirmatively or negatively) you are out of line.  Use of that word implies expectation of that word, and all the twisted implications that go along with it. Forgiveness should only be brought up by the abused person themselves, should they choose to, and they should never be pushed by anyone to forgive their abuser.   Ever

When you look up on the internet "how forgiveness hurts" you find nothing but articles on how to forgive.  There is something wrong with this picture.

And something is wrong with the implied underlying meaning of "to forgive."  Forgiveness is earned.  If it's not you suffering the abuse, drop the forgiveness concept.  You are only adding insult to injury over the long term.

* * *