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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Forgiveness
I am curious for other's thoughts, feelings and insights on the topic.
I am struggling with it. Personally, I find it easy to forgive when there are past issues but how do you forgive when there are new things popping up every week with your ex? Most of which involve my daughters-- emotional harm.
Tina
Mommy to "M" (age 6.5) and "K" (age 4.5)
I am a single mommy who represented myself in a 2.5 year custody battle and divorce. www.onemomsbattle.com
Find me on Twitter: OneMomsBattle
My Blog: OneMomsBattle.com
Re: Forgiveness
How can you forgive someone who deliberately hurts your children over and over? I couldn't.
Forgiveness for a past bad act is one thing. 'Forgiveness' for ongoing bad behavior with no remorse and no sign of stopping sounds more like enabling and chickening out. What are you doing to protect your child/children from this?
I agree- and that is why I am struggling. I need to find a way to free myself from the anger that I carry. Maybe that is a better way to put it rather than "forgiveness". The anger/stress is causing health problems for me lately (I have MS) and I need to find a better way of dealing with it all.
I am definitely not enabling or chickening out-- I've spent a few years fighting very hard to protect my children. I find myself angry at our system also-- which is supposed to protect our children...yet doesn't.
I don't believe that you forgive for the other person, you forgive for yourself - so that you can move forward. That said, it can take months or years to forgive sometimes - it's not easy. It's something I've really struggled with too. This is a quote I really love from The Oprah Show: Forgiveness means giving up the hope that the past could be any different.
Stress + MS is really tough (my sister has MS), do you have some activities you enjoy that might help you get some aggression out? Exercise? That always seems to help me.
Doglove---
I am standing up for my kids- please don't be so quick to judge another unless you know the story.
I am asking a general question about forgiveness and the power that comes from doing that. I don't want to go through life with hatred in my heart.
Literally. Anger is a vaccum that sucks out all your energy, sucks out your happiness, your positive energies, and sometimes even starts to suck at your faith. Today I had some issues with anger in the morning, however, on my drive to church I kept repeating "Anger sucks. It is purposless. Nothing good can come of it," over and over and over. That helped. So if you come across this and feel anger in your heart please know the above. It is not easy and sometimes you need to take it moment by moment, but hopefully one day my/your anger with disapear and we will not need to repeat "Anger sucks. It is purposeless. Nothing good can come from it."
Forgiveness just isn't a word that's in my vocabulary when it comes to my ex.
I try to focus on coming to terms with the fact that I may never have that kind of closure on our relationship and that I'll never understand why he chose/chooses to cause harm to his own children.
It's a daily struggle, but I remind myself that stressing out about the things I can't control and sacrificing my health in the process is just another way that he can get to me. Therapy helps a lot. So does writing, anxiety meds, talking with friends and doing things that I enjoy.
Good luck!
Being able to forgive is incredibly freeing and I'm proud to have go to that point with my XH and others who've hurt me in the past. Forgiving them wasn't about them at all. It was freeing me from the hurt/anger/frustration. Life is a lot easier without carrying that around in my heart.
Now, ongoing stuff is harder because to me, forgiveness is more about past behavior, not ongoing stuff. There wil always be people who don't do/act/say what they should and I find that if I just acknowledge that the only person I can control is me, it helps me let go of the frustration from the ongoing stuff.
For me, it was more a matter of forgiving myself for picking such a bad partner. My ex is not a bad dad, he was a bad husband. Once I forgave myself for not paying attention to the red flags at the start of our relationship and just thought of my marriage as part of my journey through life, it was a lot easier to move forward with the second stage of my life.
Forgive yourself first.
HA! I replied and then read what achase said. For two people who have butt heads as we have, we seem to have very similar ways of thinking now that we are further removed from the divorces!
This. I will never forgive him. However, that doesn't mean that I let anger consume me every day either. It's something I've just come to terms with and realize that he acted the way he did and I can't change it.
I also need to work on forgiving myself though as others mentioned. I haven't done that yet and think I'm going to get back into therapy. I need to forgive myself for having poor judgment and having a relationship with Ex. I feel extreme guilt that DD has him for a father and that she'll never have the ideal family life.
Great minds think alike.