The Forgiver's Dilemma: Can Letting Go Set You Free?

I sense a false dichotomy/dilemma approaching:

> The Dilemma: David has two choices

Forgiveness doesn't have to imply returning to the same level of trust. You can forgive your child for having lost your phone, and yet choose to wait until they're older before lending them the phone again.

Forgiveness is more about your own internal state. Are you still holding onto the pain of the betrayal? Most of the time, you're just continuing to let that thing harm you, if so.

Forgiveness can also be about finally acknowledging that you can't change the past.

It's probably a matter of definition, but I think it's useful to distinguish forgiving and (re)trusting.

IMO this is the most important distinction on this topic, whatever definition you give. The difference between:

- to forgive (that is, letting go of negative feelings, accepting what happened), and to

- to trust (that what happened would not happen again).

You definitely don't need the other person (or their actions) for the former. But you need evidence of some change for the latter. (Ideally you need the other person to acknowledge what and why it happened, and following actions to attest to the new behaviour)

You can easily forgive a child that somehow misbehaved, without any work or interaction on their part, and have zero hard feelings. Which is different from trusting that the child's behaviour has changed.

Mixing forgiving and trusting, as is done throughout the article, is not at all productive.

You seemed to have forgiven them, but you don't trust them. How could you?

To start with, I really enjoyed Veritaseum’s recent take on the “Prisoners Dillema” and Game Theory (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM). It seems appropriate to mention since it circles around this same “dillema” and even places a numerical value on the value of forgiving in game theory simulations. The historical part and layman’s reduction is good to.

I think THIS article undersells the “Hold a Grudge” payoff:

> David feels justified but might damage the relationship and stop Samantha from learning from her mistake.

Most relationships have an ongoing bargaining element to them. Exchange of services, tit for tat, quid pro quo, pay each others backs, etc. Even when we pretend they don’t, or obscure them by wrapping higher level words around them. What makes forgiving hard, is that when we feel wronged, we feel it gives us a better bargaining position go forward. If we forgive, we fear it devalues or weakens our bargaining power going forward. Why else are we so tempted in a debate to rejoin with “yeah, well you do too!”

To clarify, I AM a big fan and proponent of forgiveness. I aspire to be better at. But I think this article has missed a key part of the dillema, by not better portraying the real allure of not forgiving.

No mention of the dimension and consequences of what to forgive. Forgetting to take out the trash is not the same as sleeping with somebody else.

> "Once a cheater, always a cheater." [...] Someone is three times more likely to cheat if they have cheated in the past.

https://www.du.edu/news/once-cheater-always-cheater-du-study...