John Prescott’s wife of 48 years was reported yesterday in the paper saying that she has still not forgiven him for having an affair with his secretary, “because to forgive is to condone”. Well that’s an interesting thought. Forgiving isn’t condoning in my book – she says she can now “get away with murder – “go on love, you buy it” are not words I thought I’d ever hear fall, let alone fall frequently from my husband’s lips” she said which suggests that she spends a lot of time perched up on the moral high ground with his credit card – somewhere that doesn’t sound like a balanced relationship if you are to stay together living and dealing with the endless aftershocks of an affair.
I do struggle with the concept of forgiveness – I wrote a post on it once quite a long time ago – in response to a request from another blogger. More to do with whether it’s possible to forgive and forget but here it is again in case anybody is interested in letting me have their views on what it means to forgive…..
“A fellow blogger “MOB” has asked me to write about whether or not I believe in the concept of “Forgive and Forget”.
I used to think that forgiveness was a lovely idea until I had something to forgive, then it became a lot more difficult. It puzzles me slightly – the whole idea of forgiveness. Once you have forgiven somebody for whatever wrongdoing they have done, are you supposed to feel better? Or are they the ones who are supposed to benefit? Or is it a symbiotic relationship? It has that element, for me anyway, of the “forgiver” being allowed to feel slightly more superior than the “forgivee” – to forgive somebody you are almost rising above and looking down….perhaps that’s why, for me, it works best as a religious concept.
To forget? Not sure. I forget lots of things these days because I’m getting old and alcohol is slowly blurring my memory cells. But important things? Even things that really really hurt…why would you forget them? Deal with them, yes. Box them, yes. Learn from them, yes. Move on from them, yes. But being aware of them and even remembering them from time to time seems to me like progress. You learn from experience. To block out those experiences seems pointless to me. You need to confront them and try to understand them, live with them and grow from them.
ANYWAY….the point was that MOB wants to know why the concept of “forgive and forget” was so huge and difficult for me….I won’t bore you with ALL the details (check out my post called “Marriage and Motherhood” if you want to know more) , but I will have to briefly explain the situation so that you can see why our mutual lack of forgiveness was so damaging.
“It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend”.
William Blake
He was my best friend. When best friends do something really bad it is very hard to forgive them because you feel so unbelievably let down and betrayed. I had thought we had the perfect life. Three beautiful, healthy children and a lovely home. My husband had a good job and I therefore had the luxury of being able to give up my job to stay at home to bring up the children. That isn’t to say that I was deliriously happy all the time…I had my low grade resentments – sometimes I found being at home all day immensely dull, sometimes I wished I could just walk out of the door in the morning without a backward glance. Sometimes I just felt bored and cross. Sometimes I was angry with him because his life with children was remarkably similar to his life without children -his life changed very little. Whereas mine changed dramatically.
Apparently, around the 14 years of marriage mark, I failed to pay due attention to the fact that he felt trapped and unhappy. He didn’t love his job and he felt pressured by having a large mortgage. I didn’t know (until it came out in counselling) that “what time will you be home?” had become a question he had grown to hate. There was a problem with a client at work and then his father died, both these things deeply affected him, understandably. I tried to be supportive but he grew distant and disinterested. I couldn’t reach him and we began to argue.
When I found out that he was having an affair, his distance and his urge to create arguments all made sense. That’s what I believe happens if you’re in an affair – you convince yourself that what you are doing is acceptable because your partner “doesn’t understand you”.
I plummeted from a great height into a very big black hole. I didn’t recognise myself anymore, let alone him. I lost the plot far more than he will ever understand. My entire life unravelled before my eyes. At first I was numb and then I was angry and then I was deeply deeply hurt (and if I’m honest, humiliated too). It is easy to drift apart in a marriage. To lose sight of each other and yourself. Especially when you have three young children to look after. The hard bit is keeping it together when the going gets tough. I felt he had given up too early and taken the easy option out. When it all fell apart I panicked. Being on my own was not an option. I wouldn’t be able to cope. My children wouldn’t be able to cope. He stayed in the house and in our bed. I tried everything. Counselling. Endless drinks and dinner together to talk on neutral territory, away from the children. Weekends away. I tried desperately to make sense of it all, to understand, to forgive him. But he had become a stranger to me and I began not only to hate him, but to hate myself. I was alarmed by the constant ugly roar of noise in my head – the sound of my pure unadulterated rage.
There was no way, in the early stages, I could forgive him for what he had done. He wasn’t sorry enough. He didn’t lie down and say “run me over” (”twice or three times if you want”). He didn’t insist we flew off to a desert island to sort things out. He didn’t put his wedding ring back on when I asked him to. He didn’t buy me the biggest diamond in the world (yes, shallow I know, but I’m a girl…it might have helped a bit). He didn’t go and talk to my parents (yes, a bit weird, but for some reason I wanted him to do that). He didn’t even stay at home with me the day I found out and couldn’t stop crying. He went to work.
I wish I had been able to forgive him. Things would have been so much easier in many ways, expecially for the children. But. I couldn’t. In order to forgive you need to be able to understand their side of the story and I didn’t. After two years of trying to work it out I filed for divorce. Much against his will. He was furious. In fact, he still hasn’t forgiven me.
Mark Twain said something beautiful about forgiveness:
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it”.
How lovely is that? But unfortunately, if you want an analogy here, I felt like dog shit on the heel of his shoe and dog shit, when crushed still smells like dog shit (only worse). Is it any wonder that I’m not a poet?
So. We’ve now been divorced a year almost to the day. There’s nothing much more to say. It is an enormous shame. Life is very different now. For all of us. I have forgiven him because I’m calm and peaceful again and I really believe that life is too short to hold grudges forever. But what is the point of forgiveness now? It’s too late and not really the relevant emotion anymore. He isn’t remotely interested in the fact that I can now deal with his betrayal. He now can’t forgive me.
He is still very angry and hurt by the way I reacted. He felt he did “a bad thing” but that my reaction was extreme. He is still furious that when I asked him to leave the house I didn’t ever, in the two years that he was renting a flat about 5 miles away go and see him there. Why would I? I wanted to run him over, not go and have a bloody cup of tea in his new depressingly childless flat. He told me once that he would never forgive me for depriving him of his children and he still feels that way.
It is all so desperately sad. How easily lives can be changed forever by the actions of others. Cause and effect. I’m not bitter anymore. “Shit happens” is my new philosophy in life and I’ve grown and learnt from my experience. However, it doesn’t help that he is still so angry. I think it’s a shame that we haven’t moved on to a better acceptance of what went wrong. He actually said to me just before we divorced that he hoped, one day that I would do something I needed forgiveness for and not get it and then understand how awful it was not to be forgiven….
So have I forgiven him? Yes (sort of). Have I forgotten? No I haven’t and I never will.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Sort of is good.
You are the winner if you can. I bet he hasn’t.
And you never need forget.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Beautiful post – and I identify with so much of it, particularly the feelings you describe so vividly when you found out about the betrayal. The end of my marriage was so different – no infidelity that I am aware of – just a husband who said he just didn’t love me anymore and didn’t believe he ever would again…but then refused to leave because of the kids until I eventually (2 years later) said we needed to separate. Now we are verging on divorce and so many of those feelings of frustration and resentment are trying to rear their ugly head. I still don’t understand why he no longer loved me. I still find it hard to forgive him, really forgive him, deep down for seemingly overnight opting out of our marriage. And I wonder when I will ever forget, as the feelings are still deeply engraved on my heart and the hurt is still there.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
From my stand point its fine to say I’ve forgiven, but one never forgets and when it is brought up from time to time, I think they are so tightly weaved together that perhaps forgiveness is just not truly possible.
I think its more relevant to say one can get past it and move on. But we are elephants, we cannot forget things, well l can’t ….perhaps its even more about atonement (showing you are sorry) and if that takes place it makes for a better balance…
btw; l’m watching or listening to loose woman, and Alister Campbell is on and it is so funny because only Kate Thornton has said anything to him… its like a two way conversation, the others arent contributing at all, Coleen, Jane and Lesley Garrett…Hmmmm interesting
February 9th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
A fascinating, very interesting post. I hope you forgive the anonymous comment because this strikes so many chords with me but I’m not keen on people knowing. I too read that interview with Pauline Prescott about forgiveness. It’s very interesting to read your take on it as well. My husband had an affair and we’re still together (after a lot of pain and heartache). I still don’t feel able to forgive him though. I understand why it happened, we worked through it and I’m happy we managed to work things out. It helped us understand more about our relationship and our marriage is strong again now. We were lucky that our relationship had a lot going for it and was salvagable. I sometimes wonder if you can have a relationship with someone you can’t forgive, I go over it in my mind a lot. I certainly don’t max out his credit card or take advantage of his guilt. It’s never occurred to me to do that. People react in different ways. I do feel anger at times, but I think a lot of the time I choose to move on with life. Maybe I will forgive one day. My thoughts are the same as yours ’shit happens’. And also I think ’shit happens and nobody died’ : ) Sorry for the rambling comment, reading posts like yours helps me think about how I handle things.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
How brilliant to have a different angle and of course it’s fine to be anonymous. I feel very reassured that you are in a stronger marriage, but without the change of balance. I knew in my heart i would never be able not to bring up what he’d done at any given opportunity. It changed everything for me. Maybe I was very immature, or maybe our marriage wasn’t strong enough. Who knows. Lx
February 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
once again, a truly honest and beautifully written post darlin’. thank you for sharing all of this. i remember when i started reading your blog..sick as a dog…and boy was it a marvelous discovery. a journey. i read it from the beginning to end, propped up in bed…and still do everyday. i LOVE your blog for its humour, honesty, relevance. thanks again…lots love to YOUUUUUUU xxxx j
February 9th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
What a powerful post. My own experience is very different. I can still remember looking for a bill to pay when I came across a letter that my husband had written to someone explaining why he was looking for an extra-marital relationship. In his words, I was a workaholic who wasn’t interested in our marriage, especially not the physical side. I was devastated. I was desperately trying to keep the very expensive roof on our home while being a loving mother and a caring daughter. Hurt and angry, I retreated and built the wall between us even higher. We separated after 25 years of marriage. The divorce was mean and nasty and took another 5 years. Just before we ended up in court for the final act, he said, in the most mean-spirited way, “Once this is over, I never want to set eyes on you again”. I was equally vicious.
How do you forgive and forget after all that hurt?
The constant thread was our children and, although we were quite happy to be vile to each other, we tried to maintain some kind of facade for them so we could, at least, attend family events. And that gave us some foundation.
I’m sure he won’t ever forgive me for my failings and I can’t forgive him for his nastiness either. Forgetting? Well, clearly not. But I can’t go through the rest of my life as a bitter and twisted old woman. It’s in the past, I can’t change it but I can resist the temptation to unwrap the wound and pick at the scab.
Today, some years on, we are good friends (and, yes, I see no hypocrisy in that). He spends Christmas with me in Wales with our children. When his father quite suddenly, died nearly 2 years ago, his family contacted me to tell him and to support him and so on. I didn’t hesitate. There are many occasions when we’ve shared small kindnesses.
People say that time heals. I’m not sure that it does. I think that, if you want to keep being hurt, no amount of time will heal. I focused on the things that made me happy and to practise appearing happy in the hope that it would become real over time.
Right, you’ve made me all philosophical so I’d better get a cup of tea and revert to be shallow and carefree.
Mad x
February 9th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Thanks Mud – very good reply and how awful it was for you but also how reassuring to know that things can and have got better Lx
February 9th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I don’t get it, things sound like they were awful and past the point of no return – so why was he so angry at you for filing for divorce? Its not like either of you could have stayed married for unhappily ever after?
February 9th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Heavy stuff. And hard to be honest with oneself about.
I believe that forgiveness, or lack thereof, has a much bigger impact on the forgiver than on the one forgiven. If we carry around emotional baggage, it’s on our backs. But genuinely putting it down involves taking responsibility for our own lives and happiness. It means having the courage to take action, to focus on what it is that we actually control, and face the potential upheaval that comes with the resulting change. – I’m not really at this point in my own life, but I want to be.
I agree on the forgetting – if we forget, we don’t learn. When something like a betrayal happens, there’s a lot to learn from – about ourselves and our partners. Forgetting almost seems like pretending nothing happened, and that can’t possibly be sustainable.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
I am afraid that I am in the forgive but never forget camp, the flip side is that if someone does something for me I may not smother them in kisses but I never forget…..
February 10th, 2010 at 8:52 am
I am in the process of trying to save my marriage. I am ‘lucky’ in that my husband is working very hard at finding out why he did what he did. He knows that even if I die tomorrow, he still has to find out why he did what he did – to make him grow from this destructive behaviour. The affair and the healing has nothing to do with me. I am here as his friend to help him through it. As for me, sometimes I am philosophical and think I can forgive – he is human, he made a mistake, put myself in his shoes etc. Sometimes I want to kill him. slowly. But that is my process and we work through it with professional help. It sounds to me FA like your ex hasn’t forgiven himself – he is displacing that on to you because you took real action to change your life. And in his remarriage finding another comfort zone where he doesn’t have to take responsibility for his own actions. So maybe that is the first step in truly understanding what forgiveness is – to forgive yourself. I will one day forgive myself for compromising my beliefs by trying to forgive an adulterer. But I will only do it once. And I hope one day to move so past it that I don’t throw it in his face at every opportunity!
February 10th, 2010 at 9:04 am
That is a very mature approach – I hadn’t thought about having to forgive yourself for compromising your beliefs on forgiving an adulterer – it’s all about perspective – if he’s sorry and seems to you to be doing all he can to work it out and that is working for you then bloody brilliant. You see it as his failing and nothing to do with you which is admirable – I was far too immature to look at it like that. Took it way too personally. Lx
February 12th, 2010 at 11:25 am
I hope you realise what a very important and fantastic post this is. Can’t help thinking that you should do more with it.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Thank you very much Francesca – really not sure what else to do with it though Lx