SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Forgiveness, will try to make this make sense…
How and when do you forgive yourself for what you allowed during your partners affair? I’m annoyed with myself for how I allowed to be played. How oblivious everything was but I didn’t trust my gut. How long I allowed myself to be fooled for.

How do you forgive your partner/ex partner. Or not forgive them but let it go? Even if the relationship ends. How do you just let it go so it doesn’t consume, make you bitter?

The affair partner? In my case she tries to make out she was unaware of myself and our children. Obviously he was telling her other things but I reached out multiple times, he lived with me and didn’t make time for her. I’m not sure how much clearer she needed it.

So my question basically how do you forgive yourself, your partner/ex, affair partner? Not for them but for yourself so you’re not holding on? If that even makes sense?
And when does it happen?

Missme,

So my question basically how do you forgive yourself,…

Forgiving oneself is one of the most difficult thing a person who has experienced betrayal can do. I believe the reason that it is so hard is that there is no fault on a betrayed spouse to forgive. You trusted, that is what a loving partner does. You believed, because that is what a loving partner does. You were wronged not you were wrong. Your trust was used against you no differently than a gun is used against a person being robbed. Who would blame the person being robbed. All that said, I spent far too many years/decades trying to find forgiveness from me to me for wife’s decisions.

...your partner/ex, affair partner?

I’m not a good person to answer this question. I’m not a big fan of the idea of forgiveness so I’ll let others give you their thoughts. For me, it was about trying to understand what I could and accept what I couldn’t understand. Then allow for change to occur.

And when does it happen?

In your own time and in your own ways. I would like to add that there are stops and starts, forward movement and backward movements that can go on for years and, in my case, decades.

Asterisk

So, first you have to define what your part in being deceived merits forgiving yourself.

I think, with some introspection, you will find that your assessment that being snowed, turning a blind eye, not recognizing, experiencing denial, trusting someone untrustworthy, amounts to being unable to solve an equation where not enough information was given. You had previous understandings that were false. You were attached to those understandings. You wanted to trust, feel cherished, special to this trusted person in ways that you thought precluded this kind of reality. In your misunderstandings, you believed you had this.

Now that you know otherwise, you are angry with yourself for not knowing otherwise, before you had the information to do that! In retrospect, things seemed obvious, etc. you go over it a thousand times, asking yourself why you didnt have the magical ability to see omniscient truth. There might be some anger towards yourself for ways in which you were a supportive and good partner. If you hadnt been so all in, this wouldnt be so unjust, right?

You could never have done that. You certainly cant go back. You are holding your previous self to an impossible standard. You are blaming the wrong individual for what happened to you.

That kind, loving soul whom you were was treated badly enough by someone else. Your previous self deserves to be loved and regarded with compassion, not heaped with notions of having failed for not recognizing being the only one acting in good faith. You deserve to be accepted by yourself for the good in your heart and the truth of being loveable, capable, and sufficient. your misused trust deserves to be mourned. It was a beautiful, silver prayer lived in earnest, and crushed by circumstance beyond your power to help.

Carry that dream in your heart with love for yourself for having had it. Its so sad that it was broken, because it was so beautiful that you had it.

That would be a pretty good foundation for acceptance. And if you process your feelings enough, forgiveness will come, as Asterisk said, in your time, in your way.

Accept and forgive yourself first. Forgiving the partner and the Ap can come later. When its right, you wont have to force it. Probably wont be possible without healing yourself first.

[This message edited by 5bluedrops at 1:36 PM, Saturday, December 27th]

I think that saying I need to forgive myself for being cheated on is a non-starter for me.

I think it’s akin to me being stabbed, and then saying I need to forgive myself because the blood from my wound stained the carpet, or because I had knives in the house.

No, I don’t need to forgive myself for trusting the one person who vowed to stand by me, be my loving partner, and to be faithful all the days of his life.

I don’t need to forgive myself for placing my trust in him.

I also won’t forget what happened. I won’t forget the lies and pain.

Am I obligated to forgive if I decide to stay?

I don’t know about that. I’m hung up on working towards trying to rebuild my trust in him, believing I know the full truth, and trying to believe he loves me at all. I can’t begin to understand if forgiveness is necessary for moving forward or not. I’m still in "heal the wound" phase, I suppose.

Some people think you need to forgive to stay together. I was one of them before this affair. Now, I don’t even know.

Healing from infidelity is complex, and individual. In my case, I think I forgive his fundamental weakness. But not the lies. Not yet.

One of SI's axioms (axia?) when I started was that a BS can R without forgiving. That still makes sense to me. I think that depends on what one means by 'forgive.'

For 2 years I did my best to come up with a way of punishing my W and ow without adding to my own pain. Two years out, I gave up the attempt. I still had the desire, but after 2 years, I shut it down whenever it reared its head. At 3.5-4 years out, I realized I no longer had any desire for revenge. I had relaxed; I felt significantly less tension. I was definitely happier after giving up all desire for revenge. The payoff was entirely for me.

I found what worked for me, but it was hard work, even though the work was done without my realizing it. There are other ways of conceiving of 'forgive', I'm sure, but I have no interest in mustering the energy to identify them.

So if you're interested in resolving the 'forgive' question, my reco is to begin with figuring out what 'forgive' means to you?

"How Can I Forgive You?: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To," by Janis A. Spring, is the best book I've read on the topic.

"Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past".
- Lily Tomlin

I don't think a betrayed spouse was ever wrong for trusting their wayward spouse, for never believing that they would have an affair, or for ignoring their instincts. I've nothing for which to forgive myself in this regard.

I've forgiven my exww. That sort of crept up on me years later. Healing was a big part of that.

As for the OM, I've not forgiven him. But then again, I don't care about him at all. He doesn't exist in my world. However, if I ever meet him in real life... well, bad shit will happen.

Echoing what others said - it takes time to recognize that you did nothing wrong. Trusting your partner wasn't a mistake. Choosing to R or D is also not something you need to feel guilty about. If you want to call this a form of forgiveness, you can, but I prefer to call it acceptance.

Getting to the point where you accept these truths is part of the journey many of us go on. Our first instinct is to accept responsibility because that means we can control the situation in the future. It's good to take some lessons from past experiences and try to carry that forward in our actions, but in the case of betrayal, the lesson isn't that trusting your partner is wrong. It isn't that you should always listen to your gut (gut instinct can be wrong too). It's maybe to be less naive about what people are capable of and to draw firmer boundaries about how we're willing to be treated, but the most important takeaway (in this context) is that you can't control other people.

Without some measure of trust, society would fall apart, and once trust is part of life, betrayals will happen, they will cause pain, and unlike a hot stove, we won't always be able to avoid that pain.

How do you forgive your partner/ex partner. Or not forgive them but let it go? Even if the relationship ends. How do you just let it go so it doesn’t consume, make you bitter?

I haven't forgiven him, I never will. He doesn't deserve forgiveness. This was his choice, and he doubled down on infidelity many times. For a time I did believe he had the capacity to change, but he proved who he was enough times to cement in my mind he is a serial cheater and needs validation that he gets from "having more women than Dracula". That was one of the things he bragged about, which shows he has shallow roots.

So my question basically how do you forgive yourself, your partner/ex, affair partner? Not for them but for yourself so you’re not holding on?

I didn't cheat, I was manipulated and lied to. He was the one person I should have been safe with, but he wasn't. He was the biggest betrayal in my entire life, and the biggest source of pain and trauma. He was the life lesson that stole my sleep, my happiness, sense of security and my trust. I won't "forgive" myself for being abused and abandoned for the trash women he cheated with. Let God forgive him. As for the "other woman" after 5 years I managed to bond with her, which is nothing short of a God given miracle, considering I helped him divorce her, and he forced me to work with her when she was his wife and he left me for her. We had a common denominator, which was HIM, and we compared lies he told.

Fast forward he's serial dated, with no success. He was "in love" three times with three different women in less than 2 years since 2023. He's now found a gem of a woman, a former recovered meth dealer, on probation that he treats like a queen, at least for the moment. She's the newest placeholder that I have to watch reap the rewards that I never got in 25 years. She's what I feel may be his "last call woman". I have so much anger toward having to hire her and see their lives in my work day in my face, it's nearly destroyed what's left of me. The only reason I'm still breathing is I refuse to let him take the air from my lungs. I wish them EXACTLY the same happiness he gave me, the betrayal, the lies and emotional turmoil.

It's irrational that he has this hold on my well being, but it's ingrained in me that I'm struggling mentally, financially and will likely continue to do so for the rest of my life due to his choice to cheat. The bigger issue is how to come to terms with the fact he gets to be happy even if for a year or two, when he utterly destroyed my entire life and I'm the one suffering the consequences.

[This message edited by Muggle at 7:39 PM, Saturday, December 27th]

Many times when the topic of forgiveness comes up on these threads, we often use the term 'acceptance'.

Many forgive their wayward partners; many do not. But over time, I think that most people 'accept' that this trauma happened to them, there is no 'leveling' of the justice scales, and we move on with life. We most likely are altered, but we move on.

In this sense, I haven't really forgiven myself post discovery. Living through it, and looking back over time, I am really disappointed in my lack of action(s). It wasn't paralysis, but it was like I was waiting for things to get better without me taking any real direction to do so. If I look at my largest regret, it is that I didn't file for divorce in the months afterwards. We are by my definition long reconciled, and I am glad that we are still together. I didn't necessarily want divorce. But it doesn't change that fact that if I am being honest, I was too scared to take that step. Sure, I had legal consultations, but I wasn't ready to act. I should have, but didn't start the procedure.

I will never be 'good' with my lack of action in those early days. I don't need to forgive myself for not doing what I believe to this day, I should have done then. But I can accept that I didn't do it, understand why I didn't do it, and hopefully learned enough from then that if ANY situation in the future makes me hesitate when my mind is screaming to take action, I will put aside any possible fears and do what I truly believe is correct. But I'll only know if that situation arises.

So, Missmee, maybe acceptance might be a better approach than forgiveness?