It can be good NOT to forgive

AN OLD friend recently accused me of being ‘too forgiving’.

He actually suggested that my memoir (A Small Dog Saved My Life) was ‘too kind’ to my ex-husband and that in this column I preach forgiveness too easily. He asked: ‘Papering over the cracks — does that really make it better?’

Hmm — yes, usually. But it’s such an interesting question.

I’ve written before about the organisation called The Forgiveness Project ( the forgivenessproject.com), which uses the real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore concepts of forgiveness. The website (there’s a book, too) is really worth a visit; the stories of pain and reconciliation are unbelievably uplifting.

Yet if somebody you love has done you wrong, or hurt somebody you love, forgiveness is usually the last thing on your mind. My nuanced point is that accommodating what has happened, realising you cannot change the past but must work towards a future untainted by hatred . . . that’s not the same as the simplistic cliché, ‘forgiving and forgetting’.

Hating an ex-partner can do great damage to children, and that’s my chief concern. I see it again and again.

Anyway, I don’t always counsel forgiveness. On July 11, a letter from ‘Sad Mum/Nana’ described the sorrow her daughter’s ex had inflicted by abandoning the family. She struggled, ‘but pray for the strength to forgive him’.

I now hear that my reply helped another upset reader. I advised: ‘Put an emotional fence around your family, forget forgiveness and focus on active love for those who deserve it.’

Those words have proved a godsend to another ‘loving grandmother’ whose son was devastated when his wife abandoned him and their children to move a long way away with her new man — ignoring the family for years with not so much as a card.

My reader writes: ‘You have released me from 15 years of stress. This is because I am a Christian, but I can’t forgive and that has given me much worry... now you have released my guilt at this. So thank you.’

Yes, forgiveness is usually healing (as well as pragmatic), but not forgiving can also be a liberation.