We’re often told to ‘forgive and forget’, but where should we draw the line?
We’re often told to ‘ forgive and forget’, but is that always the best policy, and how should we decide when to draw the line?
Forgiveness is popularly billed as the ultimate goal, the ultimate good, and it undoubtedly has its virtues. Everyone makes mistakes, and loved ones don’t deserve to be punished forever for a minor infraction. There are people, however, who will take advantage of your patience and kindness, and will repeatedly treat you badly if you keep coming back for more. They cannot, or will not, change, getting off scot-free while you volunteer again and again for more maltreatment.
Should you forgive? Should you forget? Should you seek justice? Should you seek revenge? Or should you simply walk away from a person like this, regardless of their relationship to you?
Clinical psychologist and CEO of Relationships Australia NSW Elisabeth Shaw says our society’s notion of forgiveness takes its cues from religious teachings, particularly the Judeo-Christian philosophy of ‘turning the other cheek’. “The concept is very strongly rooted in religious traditions, which have a high standard that to forgive, even when there is no acknowledgement of wrongdoing, is an evolved moral position,” she says.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
Sociologist Dr Lauren Rosewarne says pressure to forgive can also derive from your cultural background, where its traditions emphasise family pride and sovereignty.
“Certain cultures have heightened expectations regarding not only family cohesion, but also not doing things to bring shame upon the family. This might mean victims of abuse, for example, being expected to stay silent rather than doing anything that might bring about family embarrassment.”
However, in recent times, there’s been some pushback on always expecting the victim to ‘be the bigger person’ and to forgive the wrongdoer in their life, no matter the size of the mistake they’ve made or how many times they’ve made it. The popularisation of the phrase ‘victimblaming’ has called into question how we receive the stories of people who claim to have been wronged, and what burden, if any, is on them to forgive.
Studies have shown forgiveness can be good for your health – reducing pain, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and your chances of having a heart attack, along with levels of anxiety and depression. On the other hand, if by forgiving a person, you’re putting yourself back in harm’s way, chronic anger puts you in fight-orflight mode and adversely affects your blood pressure, heart rate and levels of immunity.
Apart from the health implications, our society often expects that friends and family will be forgiven automatically, no matter what mistakes they’ve made. “Sharing genetics with a family member or having a shared history with a friend, there’s a tendency to think that buys a
Not forgiving bad behaviour may make you feel stronger and improve self-esteem.
person a right to be forgiven for something bad – that preservation of a relationship is of supreme importance and thus, the onus is on the victim to always forgive, no matter the infraction,” says Rosewarne.
STRIKING A BALANCE
Leaving aside the longevity of the relationship and all the shared good times and laughs over the years, Rosewarne says there are certain circumstances that can earn a person some slack for wrongdoing. Different people will give more weight to these types of considerations. “For some bad acts, there will be mitigating factors – like mental illness or substance abuse – that mean we’re motivated to grant more concessions and more forgiveness,” she says.
However, taking pity on the wrong people for the wrong behaviour can be hazardous to your health and even endanger your life, in cases of domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Rosewarne considers that it’s entirely appropriate to limit or end your contact with people who consistently demonstrate they don’t consider your needs and don’t demonstrate changes in their bad behaviour. Indeed, it might be the only consequence of their behaviour that actually hits home to them.
In recent times, however, the stakes of ending relationships have shifted considerably. When stuck in isolation or quarantine with a demanding or damaging person, leaving might simply not be an option, so we might need to let things slide or pretend to forgive them simply to keep the peace. Restricting our interactions with them as much as possible might be the best course of action available.
“One consequence is terminating relationships with people whose actions demonstrate they don’t prioritise our feelings,” says Rosewarne. “For some people, simply exiting relationships that are unhealthy is the best course of action. For others, this won’t be an option and therefore conjuring a polite-butlimited-interactions response might be a compromise.”
In less drastic cases, Shaw points out that developing proper boundaries and communicating them effectively in our dealings with others is vital for guiding them in how they conduct themselves around us. This means having a good understanding of how we’d like to be treated, and being willing to call people out when they overstep the mark, whether they’ve done this intentionally or accidentally.
“If you’re too forgiving, too trusting and never stand up for yourself, then basically you’re at the whim of anybody else in your life who can consciously or unconsciously ride roughshod over you,” says Shaw. “Other people do need our boundaries to keep them on track.”
On the other hand, it’s important to recognise that nobody’s perfect and it’s not worth throwing away a 20-year friendship over a minor infraction on your pal’s part. Sometimes loved ones don’t rise to the occasion or support us like we’d hope and expect because they’re going through a rough patch themselves.
“We’re all flawed, and we all are better at some times than others. Sometimes our friends can let us down purely because they’ve got a lot on in their own lives at the time, and on another day they would have been better at it,” says Shaw.
She points out that after a friend disappoints you by failing to support you in your moment of need, it might be best to reframe the friendship rather than ending the relationship altogether. “You could say: ‘Well, they’re still a good friend to go to the movies with, and in the good times I can still have a lot of fun with that person. I’d still go on holidays with them, but if I’m really desperate, I won’t ring them.’” MAINTAINING THE RAGE
When does repeatedly forgiving someone for bad behaviour just turn into enabling them rather than helping them? It’s important to remember that forgiveness does not necessarily involve letting the person back into your life. You can ‘forgive’ them in the sense of letting go of bitterness, but still enforce your boundaries and stay away from them so you don’t get hurt again.
While letting feelings of being hurt and insulted fester and harden into bitterness isn’t productive, they do serve a practical purpose when they first occur. They should be treated as a red flag that something is wrong so we can correct course in the relationship.
“Anger initially is very useful because feeling anger is protective and it lets us know our boundaries have been overstepped,” says Shaw. “We shouldn’t squash those feelings, we should listen to them, but what we need to do is then use them to make some good decisions.”
Where nothing changes for an extended period of time, or you perceive that your needs aren’t being valued by the other person, your anger becomes dysfunctional when it doesn’t dissipate and starts to affect other aspects of your life.
“If the anger never goes away and you’re living and breathing it and you can’t sleep at night, then it’s gone beyond a functional indicator of trouble,” says Shaw.
Further, if you’ve reached the point where revenge seems like a good idea, Shaw says this is an indicator that you’ve lost perspective, and it’s better to accept what’s happened and look towards the future.
The bottom line is: everyone makes mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from them. When you’re finding that someone repeatedly disregards your wellbeing and happiness in their words and deeds, it’s time to rethink why you still have a relationship with them. To Rosewarne, this comes down to how they affect your self-esteem and mood when they’re around. “If spending time with someone causes you to feel ‘less’ – less safe, less happy, less smart, less confident – then you should do what you can to remove yourself from this situation. Such relationships rarely improve on their own.” VISIT MiNDFOOD.COM
Forgiveness is often the better course of action but in order to reap its benefits, it is important to not confuse forgiveness with condoning. The two actions can and should be separated. mindfood.com/importance-forgive