If You Cannot Forgive, You Cannot Sustain Love

If you cannot forgive, you cannot sustain love. Sooner or later a loved one will say or do something hurtful. Then a test of love will ensue. Without the aid of forgiveness, you will not be able to right and restore the relationship. Forgiveness is as a healing balm to the flesh of love.

Forgiveness is not just the responsibility of the party offended. It is a process both the wrongdoer and the wronged need to work through together for genuine forgiveness to come about. If the former denies the misdeed, showing neither regret nor a desire to repent, heart-felt forgiveness will not and perhaps should not happen. Yet if the latter refuses to be appeased, regardless of the other’s remorse and repentance, unforgiveness will have hardened another heart.

There are minor as well as serious offenses. Sometimes the one saying, “I’m sorry,” followed by the other saying, “I forgive you,” will suffice for both persons. But for a serious offense, more is required. The parties involved need to work through the entire process of making amends to solidify an enduring forgiveness. This process involves a sequence with the following five components:

Awareness: you have to admit to yourself the wrong and recognize its pain. If you deny or downgrade its significance to you, you will not seek to resolve it. And both parties need to be aware of the wrong.

Communication: it is vital to tell the other about the wrong committed against you. This is the most difficult step for most of us. It’s easier to keep the offense to ourselves, to diminish or dismiss its impact on us. Yet to heal the breach, you have to let your pain remain as pain, and refusing to translate it into anger, you must speak the truth calmly, succinctly, staying on track.

Acceptance: you need to feel validated, to believe your grievance is legitimate. This means you cannot let the other convince you the problem exists only in you, that your pain arose merely from your interpretation of the event, rather than from the event itself. This would generate a grievous “double-­whammy”: first is the initial wound, second is the suffering endured by being called into question – if not called “crazy.” You may need a counselor to validate you, and to serve as a referee between you and the other.

Repentance: if the other recognizes, regrets and desires to repent of the wrong, expressing commitment not do it again, forgiveness becomes both possible and essential. The regret needs to be sincere, not merely meant to appease you.

Reconciliation: now it’s for you to forgive. Your forgiveness may however need to be in stages, especially if this is not the first time the other has committed the offense. It’s perfectly acceptable to grant a conditional forgiveness, like a trial or probationary period. If this seems unfair to the other, it is fair to you – and is necessary if there is to be a restoration of the relationship. Forgiveness takes time and work. Saying “I forgive you” is one thing; letting it work through your system is another.

Forgiving another doesn’t necessarily entail going back to the way things were before the offense. This may prove neither possible nor desirable. You may have reached the point of no longer risking trust or intimacy with the other again. Forgiveness would then signify your releasing the past to be the past, and the future to be open to new beginnings. And by so doing, restoring peace to your soul.