[lfmunoz4]

I don't really understand forgiveness. Unfortunately many situations are you have 1 chance and if you mess up it there is absolutely no way to reverse the type of relationship that was created. For example if you are wronged as a child from parent. Yes later as an adult you can "forgive" (whatever that means) but then you are not a child anymore, so it is just not the same. You needed that parent as a child as an adult it is completely different. You aren't "holding" onto anything you can accept they did their best it just wasn't good enough and there just isn't any way to "reverse" that and change your childhood.

[iamthepieman]

Forgiveness is part taking control and part letting go and part accepting reality. It's not about the other person. It also doesn't mean you don't make any changes in your thoughts or behavior or adjust to the reality of whatever it is that the person did to need forgiveness for. If you were mistreated as a child, you can forgive the person who did it. But you'd be irresponsible to then just send your own kids over to that person's house or let them be a primary caretaker of your children.

[TeaDrunk]

Forgiveness isn't like acting like what a person did never happened. It's describing the cessation of the feeling of resentment and anger at being wronged. Depending on how small or large the action is, the wrongful action can be but is not always treated as if it never happened. I can cease being angry at my abusive parents but that doesn't mean I have to engage with them.

[Modified3019]

That's what you say is the definition of forgiveness, sure.

But is that the definition of forgiveness that everyone else actually has? Clearly enough people have a definition of forgiveness meaning exactly "acting like what a person did never happened", that threads like this become split with people talking past each other.

[TeaDrunk]

I mean... dictionary.com??

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgive

1 : to cease to feel resentment against (an offender) : pardon forgive one's enemies

[Modified3019]

Dictionaries don’t determine how populations actually use words. They either tell you what the author thinks the word should mean, or more optimistically how a population used to use a word, with considerable lag between updates. When a dictionary fails to capture the meaning of how people use a word, is that a failure of the dictionary, or the people using the word?

To be clear, you are not wrong for having your own definition, but neither are others. Which is what I’m trying to communicate.

Again, what’s most important is to hear what people are actually saying in good faith, instead of trying to jam it into the shape we’d prefer. If so many people have a more complex definition of forgiveness than expected, does constantly waggling a finger and pointing to another definition facilitate communication, or does it start resembling gaslighting? For many people, telling them to “forgive” is identical to telling them to say “it’s fine/it’s no problem anymore”. What a dictionary says is irrelevant here, is the above what you really want to say, even accidentally?

When a population is clearly split on word meaning, then frankly the best thing to do is find a better word that can properly separate the concepts being used. Or just call it what it is, “letting go of anger/resentment”. Frankly that’s a lot more clear on the scope and benefits of what is being talked about. Perhaps psychology has something applicable, dunno.

[reidjs]

I like the new-ish expression for holding a grudge as letting the person "live rent-free in your head." They have wronged you in the past, but it's rarely worth regularly spending mental energy ruminating about it. Easier said than done of course.

[1659447091]

I have had the same take on this concept of "forgiving another".

I don't believe anyone can "forgive" another, we just don't hold that kind of power over others. We do hold that kind of power over ourselves and can forgive ourselves here.

It's not the power to absolve the "other" that I think we look for, but ourselves. If we forgive ourselves by giving ourselves the grace to understand it wasn't our fault for their bad behaviour and that it does not reflect anything about ourselves, then we have forgiven ourselves for letting someone else make us feel some kind of way and that allowing that feeling, whether anger, resentment, hurt, shame etc. to negatively affect our life. When it comes down to it, the people who hurt us the most are the ones we love the most.

If a co-worker sabotages my job I wont be as hurt as I would be if it were a partner who was stagnating and scared I would leave them behind. I may be briefly upset with the co-worker doing it and move on never working with them or the people they ruined things with again. But someone I loved is so much worse - my job is not to forgive them, they have to do that for themselves if they ever do. My job is to decide if they will stay in my life and then forgive myself for whatever range of emotions I will cycle through. Forgive myself for not spotting the signs or being close with someone like that - if that reflection concludes that I knew something was not right, forgive myself for not having stronger boundaries or working it out before it got to that point. If the above came out of the blue, then forgive myself for the initial loss of power that was given away in feeling betrayed and hurt by someone who showed themselves to not be worthy of that position in our life.

This may be a radical take and comes from a place of experience (not naivety). I believe forgiveness is more about grace for ourselves than it is having some kind of power over another with this magical version of "forgiveness". That version I think is mislabeled as it is more about strategic action (do you hold a grudge or let it slide, which is in your best external interest), than it is about self-grace (forgiving yourself for the weight and range/length of emotions anothers actions caused you and any part you played in it if any, that self-forgiveness will, over time, release it so you may continue on with a lighter load).

[munificent]

> For example if you are wronged as a child from parent.

It is equally true that when a parent does not wrong a child, that can't be erased either. Everything that has actually happened is carved in stone in terms of material history.

What is mutable is our interpretation of that past.

> You aren't "holding" onto anything you can accept they did their best it just wasn't good enough and there just isn't any way to "reverse" that and change your childhood.

It sounds like you are holding onto the idea that there is some alternate timeline you could have lived, some superior, irreplaceable childhood that has been take from you.

You're not wrong. But the amount of time you spend ruminating on that fact and deciding what it says about who you are today is largely under your own control.

> there just isn't any way to "reverse" that and change your childhood.

There isn't any way to reverse anything in life. The only thing we have any agency over is in which direction you go forward.