The Power of Forgiveness After Betrayal

For betrayed partners, forgiveness is a topic that is often fraught with expectation, pressure, and a great deal of misunderstanding.

Today, we are going to explore what forgiveness really means as well as some new ways to consider this concept in your own life and relationships.

Forgiveness is letting go of our right to hold resentment or take revenge on someone who has hurt us. When someone offends against us, they are going one-up and taking a power-over position. Whether it is a co-worker who gossips about us behind our back, a spouse who cheats, or a family member who uses humor to cut us, the other person has gone one-up and become offensive in the relationship.

Our very human response is to go one-up ourselves and grab our power back through lashing out. If we don’t do that, we are tempted to at least nurse a grudge and hold resentment so we feel like we haven’t let them get away with their crime.

Forgiveness is when we let go of our desire to repay the harm and we avoid entering a victim-victimizer dynamic. Forgiveness empowers us. When we resist the desire to meet out our own form of justice, it creates room for us to instead make healthy moves like setting boundaries, being assertive, and using our voice effectively.

Resentment and payback negatively impact our mental and physical health because they move us into a state of emotional dysregulation where our threat systems activate and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline fill our bodies. We know that these chemicals, when over-flooding our systems, create inflammation and inflammation is the basis of all physical disease. And we know that emotional regulation – the ability to feel calm and grounded – is the basis of all mental health.

Revenge and resentment also damage our relationships with others because they move us into power-over power-under dynamics that can become chronically distressing. We want to live in a space of shared power in our relationships where hurts are dealt with constructively rather than devolving into damaging power struggles.

Forgiveness is a sneaky superpower that we can easily forget to reach for. It is a vital tool that helps us regulate our bodies and our emotions so we can have healthier lives and relationships.

Forgiveness is about our response to an injustice or wrong being done to us. When we practice forgiveness, we stay in connection with our highest self and in congruence with our values. When we move into revenge-taking or grudge-holding we are often disconnecting from our core self and operating outside of our values.

However, it is vital to differentiate forgiveness from reconciliation. Depending on the level of harm we have experienced and how the other person is operating we may not be able to reconcile with that person. We may forgive them but need to hold strong boundaries around the level of interaction or non-interaction we have.

Forgiveness also includes responsibility-taking and accountability. We may forgo resentment and revenge, but we still need to hold the person accountable for their actions and ask them to take responsibility for the negative impacts whether intentional or unintentional. We can forgive the person who stole our car and still expect them to serve their time in jail. We can forgive our cheating partner and still need therapy and extensive emotional repair and accountability if the relationship is to survive. We can forgive our co-worker but set firm boundaries around future projects with them.

I hope this blog has given you some new ways to consider the topic of forgiveness and how it can serve you in your life and relationships.

Next week, we are going to explore the concrete actions you can take to stay grounded in the practice of of forgiveness.