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

But is that the definition of forgiveness that everyone else actually has? Clearly enough people have a definition of forgiveness meaning exactly "acting like what a person did never happened", that threads like this become split with people talking past each other.

The reason that the prisoner's dilemma is an inappropriate analogy is because it lacks the interpersonal element of one prisoner having mistreated the other prisoner and therein placing strain on it. As I expected, the entire post misses this nuance and completely misses the mark on accurately describing any such situation involving forgiveness. To frame the only two choices as "forgive/hold a grudge" is hyperbolic and childlike. Realistically, it's "get closer/create space." That creates a spectrum of how much space or conversely intimacy each parties want to have with one another. Of course, the blog post misses that dynamic completely in its excitement to apply the prisoner's dilemma to a situation it is inappropriate for.

I think a much better analogy for forgiveness is that trust is like a bank, or credit. It takes a long time to build up credit, but a very short time to destroy it. So it's not impossible to rebuild that trust, but it takes consistent long-term effort from the party that frayed that trust for it to be rebuilt.

And from the point of view from the party who is being asked for forgiveness -- the only appropriate way for them to respond without creating an unhealthy situation is to expect the situations that broke that trust to be rectified long-term. Otherwise, it's their prerogative to create enough distance for there to be safety. What they choose to do with that distance (hold a grudge or not) is up to them, but holding a temporary grudge is a pretty common way to work through the grief process and pathologizing it seems unrealistic and condescending to me.

Holding a permanent grudge seems unhealthy, but I don't think that surprises anyone.

I don't believe anyone can "forgive" another, we just don't hold that kind of power over others. We do hold that kind of power over ourselves and can forgive ourselves here.

It's not the power to absolve the "other" that I think we look for, but ourselves. If we forgive ourselves by giving ourselves the grace to understand it wasn't our fault for their bad behaviour and that it does not reflect anything about ourselves, then we have forgiven ourselves for letting someone else make us feel some kind of way and that allowing that feeling, whether anger, resentment, hurt, shame etc. to negatively affect our life. When it comes down to it, the people who hurt us the most are the ones we love the most.

If a co-worker sabotages my job I wont be as hurt as I would be if it were a partner who was stagnating and scared I would leave them behind. I may be briefly upset with the co-worker doing it and move on never working with them or the people they ruined things with again. But someone I loved is so much worse - my job is not to forgive them, they have to do that for themselves if they ever do. My job is to decide if they will stay in my life and then forgive myself for whatever range of emotions I will cycle through. Forgive myself for not spotting the signs or being close with someone like that - if that reflection concludes that I knew something was not right, forgive myself for not having stronger boundaries or working it out before it got to that point. If the above came out of the blue, then forgive myself for the initial loss of power that was given away in feeling betrayed and hurt by someone who showed themselves to not be worthy of that position in our life.

This may be a radical take and comes from a place of experience (not naivety). I believe forgiveness is more about grace for ourselves than it is having some kind of power over another with this magical version of "forgiveness". That version I think is mislabeled as it is more about strategic action (do you hold a grudge or let it slide, which is in your best external interest), than it is about self-grace (forgiving yourself for the weight and range/length of emotions anothers actions caused you and any part you played in it if any, that self-forgiveness will, over time, release it so you may continue on with a lighter load).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgive

1 : to cease to feel resentment against (an offender) : pardon forgive one's enemies