SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Male, 28 years together with my female partner but never married. 18 years ago discovered she had spent the previous 5 years being unfaithful with multiple ONS’s.

I tell myself/pray every day that I should forgive her, but I have never got my head around what forgiveness looks like. The fact that I’m tortured by it daily, and in turn torment her with my questions and generally giving her hard time about it, I think must mean I haven’t moved on and haven’t properly forgiven her.

She’s always maintained that she wants to stay together, and I’ve never really wanted to separate, more so since we now have two teenage kids, I can’t begin to think about dealing with the fallout for them.

But we’re both miserable and I’m now starting to think that the kindest thing I can do is leave, despite the monumental upheaval. I think if we separate then at least we don’t have to live through these emotions daily and can seek to satisfy our needs with others free of adverse thoughts of shame, embarrassment, inadequacy and guilt. Is that what forgiveness looks like? Moving on?

I agree that forgiveness is overrated People will come along and say forgiveness is for the forgiver but that is irrational to me. If you work on letting go of the resentment in therapy for example, you can have the same outcome without having to give the offender the moral guilt alleviation.

I think if you're miserable you should divorce. Perhaps the middle ground would to be agreed that you stay together on paper only and both get your needs met free from one another. Basically a sham relationship. These situations can work in complicated family situations.

Has she shown remorse? Has she given you reasons?

If no kids were present would you have left already?

Several words come up over and over again on this site that I’m not sure anyone has a precise definition for; love, reconcile, forgive.

I don’t know what "forgive" means in the infidelity context.

Here’s what Webster says(heavily redacted)

1. to cease to feel resentment against (an offender)

2 b : to grant relief from payment of
//forgive a debt

So, can you cease feeling resentment? Can you just decide that you’re going to stop feeling resentment, or is that something that just has to happen on its own? I don’t know.

How about granting relief from payment? A little more to work with, here.

What does she deserve? Your anger? Consequences?

Maybe you stop being mean, even though she deserves it. Don’t out her to family and friends, the community, even though she deserves it. Don’t punish her by leaving (leaving for your sake is ok), or take revenge, even though she deserves it.

Doesn’t seem fair, does it, doing things to help her, when she is the one who should be suffering the most.

Maybe that’s why it fits the definition of "forgiveness."

I don’t know. Wiser folks will come along.

What does 'forgiveness' mean to you? What action do you take to forgive?

For me it was giving up any desire for my W to be punished or for me to gain revenge. Forgiving in that sense was a non-event for me. I just woke up one day and realized I no longer wanted my W to suffer more punishment than she had already experienced.

I benefitted from not expending energy trying to figure out how my W could be punished without adding to my pain.

If my W was going to stop doing her work because I forgave her, I doubt I would have chosen R, or if I had chosen R, I'd have ended it.

Maybe you stop being mean, even though she deserves it. Don’t out her to family and friends, the community, even though she deserves it. Don’t punish her by leaving (leaving for your sake is ok), or take revenge, even though she deserves it.

Doesn’t seem fair, does it, doing things to help her, when she is the one who should be suffering the most.

Maybe that’s why it fits the definition of "forgiveness."

I don’t know. Wiser folks will come along.

I haven't done any of those things and never would. In fact I've never told a soul in 18 years and don't intend to. But as for forgiveness, I just can't 'enjoy' her, and being with her is becoming increasingly frustrating and painful for us both. Leaving for my sake will be painful, but I am so sure she will be free of me and happier without me in the long term.

I agree that forgiveness is overrated People will come along and say forgiveness is for the forgiver but that is irrational to me. If you work on letting go of the resentment in therapy for example, you can have the same outcome without having to give the offender the moral guilt alleviation.

I agree. Maybe it's just a semantic argument, but the work and the healing I have done are for me. I don't stew in anger and resentment. I don't pick fights or throw his cheating in his face. I am maintaining peace for myself. But I cannot go a step further and call it forgiveness or give him that moral guilt alleviation. That would be counterproductive for me and my healing. It's on him to do the work to process and live with the guilt, just as it is on me to process and move forward through the pain and humiliation.

Moving on from the resentment doesn't mean that a BS is rolling over and telling the WS that what they did is okay. It doesn't mean that everything goes back to pre cheating circumstances. I have boundaries that are healthy and healing for me. I will never wear my original rings again, ever. Anniversaries are now low key events, and a this point I will not agree to a big celebration for the next big milestone. It's that balance of moving forward and working with relationship you have while and having parameters in place that you can live with.

DrSooler

People will come along and say forgiveness is for the forgiver but that is irrational to me.

I know people who still bear a grudge against people who are dead. Or against people who have zero clue that someone is busy not-forgiving them. The guy who cut you off on the highway. Math teacher from 11th grade. Is that rational? If forgiving wouldn’t help you, who would it help?

WGOI, not-forgiving is as much an act as is forgiving. They both take work. You are continually bringing it up in your mind and generating the thoughts and emotions. You are daily spending time anti-forgiving.

What if you just aspired to do neither?

You've been tortured daily by it for 18 years and you're hesitant to end the marriage?

What exactly are you waiting for? What's the hold-up? Kids? Finances? Fear?

There is a difference between healing and forgiveness.

It appears, from your post, that your partner has not done things to make amends or shown true remorse. Has she shown you that YOU matter and that she is doing everything possible to help you heal?

It’s been 12 years since my H had his midlife crisis affair but yet we don’t discuss it only because it’s in the past. He answered questions for years and was willing to do everything and anything to make amends.

He regrets his choices and the fact that he cheated.

It took me years but I can see he is no longer the arrogant cheating jerk he was 12 years ago.

I healed as best I could from the trauma of his affair.

I wonder if your situation exists because you just don’t feel safe w/ her and are still unsure if she is or has been monogamous all these years (after you found out)?

@HouseOfPlane

To clarify, I'm pro letting go of resentment. I just see the distinction between this and forgiveness. I'm not suggesting that actively holding a grudge is helpful but likewise, I don't feel in order to move on you must face someone and alleviate their guilt by forgiving them. I can see the benefit of alleviating your partner's guilt if you are attempting what may be defined as true reconciliation but if you're either simply staying together or parting I don't feel it serves any benefit whatsoever.

I think PurpleMoxie is aligned exactly to what I'm saying

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 1:53 PM, Sunday, August 3rd]

I just see the distinction between this and forgiveness. I'm not suggesting that actively holding a grudge is helpful but likewise, I don't feel in order to move on you must face someone and alleviate their guilt by forgiving them.

Can we agree that it is possible to forgive a dead person? Or to forgive someone who harmed you that had no idea that you were harboring resentment, and probably wouldn’t care if you did?

Then by corollary, you don’t have to tell someone you’re forgiving them in order to forgive them. It doesn’t have to be a performative thing. It is not an event, like asking them to marry you was, with a date, time, and place. They don’t need to know that they’ve been forgiven. It’s not for them anyway.

If you define forgiveness as having to tell the other person you’ve forgiven them, then you are just boxing yourself out of a potential path to healing.

The core of my argument is this: while it's possible to let go of resentment toward someone internally—even if they are dead or unaware of your feelings—this is not the same as forgiveness. Letting go of resentment is a positive, internal act, but it's not a meaningful external one.

The English language is often imprecise, with words like "forgiveness" having multiple meanings depending on who you're talking to. I prefer to define forgiveness as the active process of forgiving someone to avoid this confusion

For example, if you tell a friend you've forgiven someone you had a feud with, they'll likely assume you've had a direct conversation with that person to express your forgiveness. They might ask, "When and where did you speak with them?" to which you'd have to reply, "Oh, I haven't spoken to them; I just forgave them within myself." To prevent this kind of misunderstanding, I've chosen to use distinct terms: forgiveness for the external act and letting go of resentment for the internal one.

Forgiveness should be earned by the WS. She hasn't done that, so naturally you haven't forgiven her.

"How Can I Forgive You" by Janice Spring is really good on this topic.

The English language is often imprecise, with words like "forgiveness" having multiple meanings depending on who you're talking to. I prefer to define forgiveness as the active process of forgiving someone to avoid this confusion

I agree that there are a lot of definitions of forgiveness.

People tend to believe that you have to forgive to move forward in a relationship, however it is defined. If you define forgiveness in a way that guarantees you’re never going to reach it, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

WGOI asked what forgiveness looks like. You are defining it in a way that is unachievable for him and sets him up for failure in trying to reach it. He is struggling to sit down and look his wife in the eye and say the words I forgive you. He doesn’t need to do that to help himself and to help ease his own pain.

When thinking about forgiving, it's critical to define the term

The distinction between internal and external actions is not made in Wikipedia, Psychology Today, Mayo Clinic, Harvard Health. None of the dozen or so writeups on forgiveness I've just looked at say or imply that one has to publicly forgive or tell the perpetrator that they have been forgiven. IOW, the stuff I've read say forgiveness is purely internal. At least one writeup (Psych Central) says forgiveness is 'letting go of resentment' - i.e. they are the same act not different ones.

IMO, the root of 'resentment' is anger. My own experience with resentment started when my kid brother started intruding on my own interests (which I guess was when my mom went away for his birth! ). My own resentment included lots of rumination, and it was a big heartache for me. Feeling the root anger was the way out of resentment for me, and I think it may work that way for others, so I recommend it.

Holding onto anger at one's WS is analogous to taking poison and hoping another person dies. Forgiving my W didn't do anything to alleviate her sense of guilt, and it certainly didn't do anything to change her knowledge of her responsibility for her A.

I gained some peace from forgiving my W, and I didn't have to trade anything away to get that peace.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:22 PM, Sunday, August 3rd]