Forgive and Forget Lost Relationships More Effectively by Thinking Differently

About 20 years ago I worked as a postman and had a colleague named Josh (not his real name). We spent two years working together every morning and he would often speak to me about his fantastic long-term girlfriend. What stood out most about Josh was his really bright and cheerful personality. There was never a dull moment.
Then one morning Josh did not look like normal happy Josh any more. He told me he had been with the police giving a statement after an incident in which he had inflicted a serious head wound on a man. Josh had found the man in bed with his girlfriend and had gone berserk. Eventually the charges against him were dropped but this good news had no affect on his developing dark mood. He was emotionally and mentally tormented.
Josh told me his girlfriend did not seem to understand why what she had done was wrong; she wanted to continue their relationship and was confused he was having trouble getting over what she regarded as a casual fling. Josh felt conflicted because he loved her, but after several months of this he ended the relationship.
This did not stop his emotional descent. It was like watching someone switch all the lights out on a life support machine as his face became taut and permanently sullen. With glaring eyes he spoke in short snappy sentences and developed a strange habit of holding clenched fists. I got the feeling Josh thought the people he had previously told about his great girlfriend were now laughing at him. He could see what was happening to himself and was aware others could see it, but he seemed powerless to stop the emotional rollercoaster he was on.
I was transferred to another office and lost contact with Josh but we met up accidentally about a year later and I could not believe his appearance. His eyes seemed to be glued to the floor and his once beaming smile was now a strained grimace. Even his handshake felt like an ice-cold wheel-clamp of tension. Unkempt and pale, he was so intense it was frightening.
Josh could not access his built-in forgiveness process and this was preventing him detaching from his past and moving on with his future.

None of us are immune to the thinking errors that prevent us from moving through the forgiveness cycle. Some ten years later I found myself in a similar situation to Josh and had just as much trouble getting through it. Maybe the only difference for me was I came to regard it as an interesting learning experience and this helped me to understand, research and work with it.
What is Forgiveness?
When people talk about forgiveness they tend to talk about what it should be, not about what it actually is. This creates a confusing picture. It helps if we see forgiveness as a two step process:
Step one: we establish a set of behavioural ground rules to follow as we go through the process Step two: we accept forgiveness as a biological cycle and gradually release ourselves to that cycle.

Let us take a look at those two steps in more depth.
Step one: we establish a set of behavioural ground rules to follow as we go through the process
These ground rules include:
taking personal responsibility for the entire process carrying the process out in our own time, in private (although we may get the support of others who are personally uninvolved) we produce minimal or no harmful external actions as a result of the process.
The motivation for taking this approach is to:
increase our chances of producing and maintaining a better self-image while we heal meet our social responsibilities without letting our painful feelings get in the way prevent the situation from getting worse by minimising harm.
These ground rules are a guide, not an absolute must. In forgiving others we must also forgive ourselves when we do not act in a saintly fashion.

Step two: we accept forgiveness as a mostly biological process and release ourselves to that process
In the animal kingdom the purpose of anger (including jealousy) is to defend against or take back lost territory. The emotional responses available to us can range from:
a single angry outburst (designed to drive an intruder away) to a state of hatred (a wall of rage meant to act as a long-term barrier whenever the intruder appears) to a commitment to vengeance (a journey into enemy territory with the intention of inflicting damage on the intruder to such an extent the intruder feels anticipatory fear whenever they even consider approaching our territory again).
Everything in this range, from basic anger to blocking hatred to conniving vengeance, is absolutely normal when it comes to defending the territories we value as being of survival-related importance to us.
In forgiving, however, We resist our natural urge to externally act out these emotionally driven desires. We agree not to try to take back that which is lost. To truly forgive means we discharge our intense emotional rage; grief and sadness (amongst other emotions) in our own time.

So why is it so difficult to achieve?
There are a number of reasons and all of them are in our thinking:

• Intellectual perfectionism
• Establishing Conditions
• Thinking Forgiving is a Pleasant Process
• Refusing to Hate.
  

Intellectual Perfectionism
Intellectual perfectionism dictates we forgive without acknowledging our painful feelings at all. It tells us we should magically pretend reality has not happened and concern ourselves with repairing damaged relationships; fill our heads with nice thoughts; our bodies with nice feelings and be less selfish and all as soon as possible if you please.
Forgiving means enduring a biologically-driven emotional process, not an intellectual one. We do not decide how the forgiveness cycle is completed; nature does. Our only decision is whether or not, and when, we go through the process.
Establishing Conditions
If you decide not to start the forgiveness process until someone else acknowledges they have done you wrong and apologises for it you may be stuck in an emotional rut for the rest of your life.
To achieve natural forgiveness we need to understand the process is for us alone to follow. Yes, it really helps if we get an apology as that validates our grievance - but that also means we are relying on someone else to tell us when to forgive. Our forgiveness process must not depend on the condition that someone outside of ourselves must first do or explain something before we begin.
The second condition we often try to impose on ourselves, particularly if we have split from a close relationship, is that we must understand it; we must perhaps build a new type of relationship with that person. What if the other person does not want this? Forgiveness does not necessarily mean repairing relationships. It is only about releasing your own emotional response.
Setting yourself any external goals before you allow forgiveness to take place delays the forgiveness process.
Thinking Forgiving is a Pleasant Process
Buddhists practice the principle of loving kindness and most other religions teach forgiveness as a foundational principle. Intellectually this all seems very nice and warm and friendly. In reality, however, these are goals to work towards by going through a difficult process, rather than the process itself.
Buddhists also say all life is suffering and other religions have similar messages designed to guide us through the actual process of achieving loving kindness and forgiveness through rigid self-discipline and daily practice.
This is because forgiving is painfully hard work. To forgive someone who has deeply hurt you means suffering is the result as you endure that hurt with good grace. You cannot forgive without focusing on the behaviour and the resulting pain it causes you first. Forgiving is painful.
Refusing to Hate
Nature provides us with a natural temporary mechanism for dissolving our pleasant emotional attachments when our relationships with those people no longer serves us. That tool is called hatred.
Hatred is a word we hate to hear - people think it means the same as wanting vengeance and when hatred presents itself to someone as the next step in the forgiveness process they can make the mistake of thinking it abnormal and wrong.
We love pleasant memories with strong pleasant emotional attachments and it is very tempting when you leave a relationship to want to cherish the pleasant times. Who wants to destroy their past? Well, you may have to if you do not want to stay emotionally attached to an ex-partner who has already moved on with their lives while you are left behind dealing with an emotional train-wreck.
Hatred dissolves our loving emotional attachments so we are able to move from past attachments to future ones.
It may be hatred of their behaviour or hatred of the person themselves, but nevertheless we must work with hatred as a tool when provided if we truly want to move on. To bring this about we may have to deliberately think about the pain they caused us so we can see how we were actually treated and change our viewpoint. We have to strip away the rose-tinted glasses that keep us admiring that person and cherishing our time with them. If things were so right why are we not with them?
By using hatred as the natural neutraliser it is intended to be we can forgive more quickly and get on with developing our future lives.