Forgiveness: What’s the cost
Adele Cornish, BSW
Thank you for sharing your response on whether you believe forgiveness is a necessary part of every relationship. Remember you can remain anonymous if you prefer.
Questions to consider:
- How important is forgiveness to you?
- Can a relationship survive if one person chooses to hold unforgiveness against the other?
- Can you forgive a person even when they don’t apologize?
- Have you ever needed to ask for forgiveness? What’s it like when you’ve received forgiveness or it’s been withheld?
- What’s the cost to you personally if you choose to forgive or not?
- What do you hope your couple relationship teaches the children in your family?
Your response to one or two of theses questions would be greatly appreciated!
Warmest regards
Adele
p.s. You can read more on forgiveness by clicking here
So here is another scenerio requiring forgiveness and its cost(s). My husband picked a fight with me one night – it had never happened before. I was in shock. It started because I had guided his 12 yr old son through making a pizza – something my own children have done many times – instead of making it for him. (He had stated he wanted to “build” a pizza and asked me how – no big deal, right?) As the argument progressed, my husband started in on my own children and their faults. Then the name calling started. After five hours of this my 18 year old daughter stepped in and told him to leave. My husband threw his clothes in the car, woke his son up and left even though I asked him not to. My first marriage ended after 17 years when my husband decided to leave after making the threat for several years and actually leaving once before. To me it’s a really hard thing to take…again. How can you forgive and move on with your marriage when you know you will walk on egg shells from how on?
I believe it is possible to forgive even though the other person has neither taken responsibility or apologised. Forgiveness is a CHOICE and lightens your load so you don’t carry it around with you and infect others. Asking your partner to choose between them and their biological child is cruel and self defeating. Unfortunately, children (and adults) lie! There is always a reason behind it that is that persons responsibility. You can model truthfulness and responsiblity for your actions – and hope that your children follow your lead. If they don’t, they lose peoples trust… a logical consequence. Ultimatums don’t bring a positive outcome or build strong relationships.
Thanks for responding Debbie. Well said!
I was bought up by a “conditional” mother – if you behave “this” way then I will love you but if you “behave ” that way I will not.. As a Mother now I absolutely could not forgive her for her conditional love. Until just recently when she had a stroke, now she is even more controlling. I forgive her, because if I dont I will end up the same way she is now, so highly strung that I will snap when stretched too far. Not quite a blended family example, more an example of forgiveness or it will come and bite you in the bum!!
Forgiveness is difficult but if you remember that as Adele says that it does not mean you accept what the other person did and it does not mean you need to be friends with the other person it is possible. Otherwise it will be poison for your sole and you end up only hurting yourself the other person does not care and will move on. In a blended family it makes it harder because you cannot stop the relationship but it still can work.
I believe this family would do well to sit down together with the accused family members and try to sort through. The parents should agree in advance not to take sides, as difficult as that may be, and to mediate between the offenders/offended. Truths are usually revealed during these types of attempts at resolution. This also teaches the children about family unity and support for each other. There is always hope that we are also teaching our children conflict resolution, a very lacking skill in today’s society, during these times. I have never been in the position of choosing my husband over my or his child thankfully. Good luck!
It’s taken me 9 1/2 years, but I have finally learned that forgiveness was the key to having peace in our home. My 17 year old stepdaughter and I have not often seen eye to eye, and this came at the expense of having a relationship with her and at times interfered with my marriage. Since I didn’t approve of her choices in life or her attitude she brought into our home, I would simply shut her out. If I made an issue of her behavior and tried to “parent” her, all hell would break loose in our home. This has caused so much friction between she, my husband, my children and myself and at times divided again into 2 families under one roof. But in the past 6 months, I have chosen to forgive her and my policy is now to “just be nice”. I realized that I cannot change the person she is and I have not been able to have the positive influence on her that I wanted. I had allowed her behavior and my reaction to it to change ME into someone I’m not. I have stopped showing my own disapproval of her and instead “turn the other cheek” and “just be nice”. I cannot tell you the difference this has made in her attitude at our home. She is much more polite and considerate. And we finally have the peace that I always wanted! She is still making some wrong choices, but I am not her parent, I am her friend and now sometimes confidante. We have come a long way and I only wish it hadn’t taken me so long to learn the valuable power of forgiveness.
I thought your response was very well written and thought out. It is not easy being a blended family, Noone said it would be. But what an opportunity to show forgiveness regardless of who was in the right or who lied. The liar will probably feel the guilt if not now than over time. The lesson can be so much stronger than “being right”.
Warmly,
R
Our blended family have been together 16 years.
One stepdaughter is a habitual liar; only her dad could never see it and of course she remained 12 years old in his sight. We have had terrible fights over this child. I have cried buckets and we have worked things out as best as we could because we still love each other. It does take its toll as the years and the lies continually pass. Now she is 25 years old and he is starting to see finally what everyone else has always known but that does not stop his defending her and the havoc it has caused so many people and our family. I think because he allowed and defended her for so long it was able to grow and establish as a terrible habit because no consequences were ever given.
Thanks so much Julie – wow – I pray that i can do the same as you with my step daughters. After 14 years, I realise that they don’t “hero worship” me, and they don’t actually care about what i think ( I know that you will be laughing about this, as no children do this with their parents). This is the only thing that I have left – I have tried cajolling, nagging, pleading, making deals, consequences etc etc. I just don’t have the energy to deal with their laziness, with their billigerance, and the sad thing is that i have realised that they would rather spend time with their unstable mother then be around me. They love their father, and the three of them have a great relationship, but I just feel that i am not a part of it. I guess that I just felt that I have always been the person who has had compromise the most – the girls don’t want to tidy up their rooms, so they don’t, they don’t want to clean up their bathroom, so they don’t. The dangerous thing is that it starts to impinge on my relationship with my husband, so then to protect that I then try to stand back. The problem that i have now and that I prayed about this morning is that I am developing a hard heart towards them as I have all this built up resentment – that I have done all the hard work in the girl’s upbringing and that they treat me with such distain. The only way we seem to get on is if completely give in, and in fact pandy to their every whim. I keep praying for me to be able to forgive, to be nice and kind but acting on it doesn’t seem to work as I keep thinking about how I become the “doormat”. I want to get to the place that Julie is……
After 8 1/2years of being together, we have separated. The past 2 years have been so stressful especially on my 13 year old daughter. A few months ago my stepson came to live with us, although separated we still share a house due to financial reasons. My stepkids have never liked me and always been disrespectful with their father just looking the other way…yet when the 16year old came to live with us I treated him as my own child. When he was sick I took care of him. I couldn’t be rude or ignore him as it just wasn’t right. He apologised for his rudeness saying that my caring and kindness has made him realise how disrespectful he had been. My husband however cannot control his son and they have argry outburst with my husband taking out his frustration on my daughter. I have come to realise that even though I am willing to forgive his kids and move on he cannot accept my child…even his son cannot understand his rudeness and stubbornness towards my daughter. I believe that to save my marriage my husband has to accept my daughter and learn to forgive like I have and get over his resentment for our marriage to work. We expect God to forgive us but we find it so difficult to forgive and enjoy life. As Julie has learned the power and happiness of forgiveness…yes it’s HARD….but when you take that first step it’s worth it. To help, have the attitude…”I’m leaving them in God’s hands”….Andrea I know it’s not easy and it’s only been the past 4 weeks that I can look at my stepson and accept him…couldn’t stand him being around before. Be strong everyone..I pray for my husband to forgive as I have so that the time in the house will not be stressful for my daughter!
I do beleive forgiveness sets you free. We may not like what the people in our lives do to us and sometimes it can be a bitter pill to swallow. But what it utimately does is allows you to move on and enjoy your life instead of hanging onto every hurt and resentment and turning it over and over allowing it to poisen the love in yourself and for your family. Lifes to short to hang onto hate.
I subscribe to this wtibsee because like all of you, I have a blended family. My son is 16 and my BF’s daughters are 16 and 15 and his son is 12. I should be writing on this page about how neither of us take part in disciplining each other’s kids but after reading the comments from all of these women I feel compelled to give you all a wake up call.I am first a child of divorce at 9 and my mother re-married when I was 12. She asked me if it was ok with me to marry him first. I lied because even at that young age I wanted my mom to be happy since my dad had left her for another woman and had devastated her. My step father then in his early 30 s was terrible to me growing up. I was picked on, ridiculed and worse, when I was in trouble my mother allowed him to do the disciplining. This man was nothing like my docile father and he terrified me most of the time. I was an only child and a very good girl up until then, but he made me feel like the black sheep of the family constantly. By 15, 16 after many altercations, yelling matches, and some physical fights, I despised my step father. When I would complain to my mother, she would almost dismiss me and instruct me to do whatever it takes to keep the peace . He accused me of things I didn’t do and lying so I just started rebelling in high school. In Grade 9 I moved out of their house and lived with my bio father for a year. My step mom turned out to be a worse drinker than my step father and also had physical violence tendencies. My mother would briefly seperate from my step father but it would be short lived. Their relationship was the most unhealthiest I had ever seen and it turned me into a scared, insecure little girl. With no self esteem at home, I turned to boys at 13 and drugs at 14. At 17, I quit high school so I could work and move out of my mom and step dad’s house. I ruined my own future because living there was HELL and all I could think about was leaving BOTH OF THEM. Every time my mom said she was going to leave him because of his at times horrible ill treatment of her, I would feel elated. She never did. I moved out at 17. I never wanted to return to their home as I had lost ALL respect for my mother. It took until I was nearly 40 to learn to find a form of respect for her again.My POINT is, if your children’s welfare and happiness is as important to you as you profess on this blog if your child is telling you they are not happy in YOUR home because of who YOU have chosen to live with if you know in your heart your child is not exagerating their situation to suit their own selfish needs . then you need to LISTEN. if you can’t find a way to turn the situation around for YOUR CHILD then you need to LEAVE!!! I would have held my mother in the highest of high regards if she’d had enough SELF ESTEEM to leave my jerk step father when she was in her 30 s. In my opinion my mother did not have enough self worth for herself to leave him.. first bad example as children ARE products of their environment; she did not place my happiness a priority over my step-father’s which made me feel like I was not as important to her as he was even though I CAME FIRST!I am now 46 and my mom is still married to my step-father. It took me having a child to develop a better relationship with my step-father because he idolizes his grandson. Had it not been for that, I would not have cared a less if he lived or died.Your kids will inevitably think ill towards YOU in the end, not the step parent if you stay in an unhealthy relationship because they will BLAME YOU for not leaving and sparing your child of the anguish when you could have done something about it. Actions always speak louder than words and kids are always more perceptive than we give them credit for. Please take heed to my story and reflect on what you are doing and if you can’t fix things, what you need to do.Reply
Adele,
Thank you for your weekly encouragement and opportunity to share our opinions on your blog. I loved the quote you offered from Max Lucado “Conflict is inevitable, but Combat is optional”. It helped me to see clearer what conflict is… and what it is not.
I was surprised with the poll results suggesting that “a significant number of men and women believe forgiveness isn’t always necessary.” I believe you are spot on when saying “In the case where hurts and issues are not resolved, unforgiveness will suffocate feelings of love, making it hard for your relationship to survive. There inevitably comes a point where you must choose to let go of resentment for the ultimate health and welfare of your relationship.”
There have been many times during the past 5 years of raising 4 blended teenagers, that my husband and I have experienced conflict AND combat, as a result of different parenting styles. Conflict… is a learning experience, Combat… is deadly to our relationship.
We make the choice. And the only way to be able to make that choice is through forgiveness. Since I am a fallible human being, I need to consciously give my feelings of unforgiveness to God, and He in return, gives me His forgiveness. It is an exchange… a gift… something only He can give… something, then, I can pass on.
It’s not easy. It requires blood, sweat and tears. All of which were freely shed for each of us on a cross in Calvary.
Jean
I agree that many others on this forum that you have to forgive and let the forgiveness heal you because the person you are forgiving doesn’t need to know that, it is for your own piece of mind. However, forgiving for every wrong or indiscretion done is hard, so it is a one day at a time kind of forgiveness which can be draining. My step daughter is now 13 and she came into my life when she was 9 and it was hell for the first 3 years but since she turned into a teenager she has matured and realised the reality of life that the grass is not always greener and it takes two to tango. She now confides in me which I didn’t think she ever would and although I still have moments when I dislike her, I try to empathise with her situation.
I don’t know if one really has to forgive everything. Sometimes it’s ok to just accept what happened, forget about it and move on. Perhaps that is a weak forgiveness…but I think what is important is that one doesn’t dwell on something, or use it to constantly remind the other person of. I think we can all share blame in family arguments. The trick isn’t so much forgiving the other, but accepting that none of us are perfect, and that we will make mistakes, rather we own up to them or not. Perhaps what I’m saying is that forgiveness doesn’t have to be spoken, if it is showed.
My stepdaughter did not forgive her father for what she perceived as abandonment for a very long time. She was hurting inside and her natural responses were to withdraw. Her father tried for years to no avail to win her heart back. She did not accept me for quite some time as well. We also had the ex wife from hell to deal with. While our marriage though strewn with internal conflicts for both of us did not suffer, my husband with his extreme heart disease did suffer quietly. Eventually we moved away for a career opportunity and this enabled my step daughter to begin anew with her dad. But they continued to have conflicts and whenever she was hurt she would withdraw for long periods of time which was devastating to her dad. Because of their roller coaster relationships I too was affected and I resented my step daughter. My husband died last year. Fortunately his two daughters came to see him and gave him the gift of peace before he passed away. They continue to relate to me much as they did to him. Not much. I understand why he was so hurt. I forgive them. I hope they do me. They lost a decade of their father’s life and they cannot get it back anymore than I can get him back. So everyone should try harder. You have no idea when that person you love so much may leave this earth.