The Final Forgiveness

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#1 Oct 21 - 1PM
prettypeeved
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The Final Forgiveness

It's been a while since I was here. I haven't been around much, because, to be honest, it's difficult not to have this site act as a reminder of what happened once you reach a certain point in your recovery. Today I've returned because I'm struggling with something and was wondering if anyone had any advice or thoughts.

My story is here.

All this happened five years ago and it took me a long while to get past it. The very last piece of the tale was that I kept encountering Narc Boy on a social website we both used and he just wouldn't go away. That ground to a halt when I finally realised it was better to cut my losses than let him live in my head any longer. I left the site, first for about 8 months, then I went back, then after he resurfaced I decided enough was enough and left completely.

That was over 2 years ago.

I have been thinking about forgiveness again (for my benefit, not his) and came to realise that I can struggle to forgive someone's bad behaviour if I can't empathise sufficiently with it.

For example I work with someone who is notorious for keeping things from people, telling some people some information, and telling others something slightly different. I eventually found I was able to forgive this behaviour when I realised that although I think this is a bad way to behave, I have actually done something broadly similar when I excluded a nasty boss from giving feedback back to my employer. This helped me to empathise and forgive.

So I tried to apply the same thing to Narc Boy, and to some degree it's been successful. I can (broadly, anyway) forgive him for misleading me as to who he was because I've done something similar when I was a kid to fit in with a new crowd. I must stress this is not condoning or denying what he did, nor is it allowing him to do it again.

I can just about forgive him for leading me and another guy on at the same time, although that's fairly difficult because I wouldn't do something like that. Once I get to trying to forgive him for trying to use me as a sort-of relationship to fill the void, as described in that Ask Dr Nerdlove article I get completely bogged down. I just wouldn't do something like that so I can't empathise with it. So I'm kind of stuck.

Has anyone had any similar experience? How did you get past this last stumbling block?

Oct 22 - 6PM
ItsFinallytime
ItsFinallytime's picture

This formula you are using

Oct 24 - 4AM (Reply to #2)
prettypeeved
prettypeeved's picture

Thanks for that.

Oct 24 - 10AM (Reply to #3)
Lookforward
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I think feeling angry is part