[Nerissa]

I wonder if Anon is trying to do something she is not ready to do.  Many Psychoanalysts don't really believe in the possibility of true forgiveness because the unconscious never forgets, so any forgiveness lives alongside anger within the unconscious and the best we can hope for is a kind of ambivalence. 

Forgiveness anyway can only be properly achieved when the act of mourning is completed and integrated.  If we tell ourselves we have forgiven before this is complete we are bypassing the vital work of mourning loss.  Being encouraged to forgive too early can re traumatise.

A famous psychiatrist, DW Winnicott (famous for the phrase ‘the good enough mother’ and for exploring the use of ‘transitional objects’ and ‘transitional space’). Said that forgiveness can only come when we are in a certain transitional space when it just happens and is a by product of the way we  are living our lives.  So the work of forgiveness and compassion is not to focus on forgiveness because it is forced, but to work on living in a certain way with the support of community etc until it happens naturally. 

Forgiveness with the purpose of surreptitious  empowerment of the victim should not be done, otherwise it is false and avoids dealing with grief. 

Here is a short excerpt from an essay  I’m reading by C.Fred Alford from a journal of psychoanalysis

Probably the most significant psychoanalytic contribution to forgiveness is to see it as one possible outcome of grief and mourning over loss. As Salman Akhtar (2002, pp. 200, 206) argues, while the capacity for forgiveness is necessary for psychic growth, this capacity is the result of analytic work leading to an ability to successfully grieve and mourn. Forgiveness is not a pathway by which we learn to grieve and mourn, even as forgiveness and mourning may eventually reinforce each other. The ability to mourn loss comes first. From this ability the capacity for forgiveness is born. When and how we grant forgiveness is a matter of cultivation and culture. Forgiveness is the outcome of successful mourning. Not a necessary outcome, but a possible one.

Judith Butler makes the good point that we fight not only against the finality of loss, but the transformation to the self that must follow once we accept this loss. Generally this loss is of another person to whom we are deeply attached, but it may be to an idea about ourselves, or about the world. As Butler (2004) puts it,

On one level, I think I have lost ‘you’ only to discover that ‘I’ have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost ‘in’ you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is neither merely myself nor you, but the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related. (p. 22)
In mourning, we mourn for the loss of those parts of ourselves that are lost forever (or so it seems, and it is often true) with the loss of the other, for they were located in the interperson.

This, suggests Frommer (2005, p. 42), is the reason why we long to forgive.

Perhaps this is why when we struggle to forgive, the recognition of what has been done to us and the expression of remorse from the person who has done it feel so much like a lifeline; the other's acknowledgment allows for the possibility that we may preserve the self we have known in relation to them; that we don't need to mourn its passing.
This raises a hope that is also a troubling possibility: that the greatest risk of forgiveness, the reason for its current popularity, and resultant misuse, is that it hints at the possibility that we can “let go” without mourning what we have lost. Forgiveness becomes mourning manqué, acceptance without grief.

Frommer's hint of a conjecture, that forgiveness might allow us to bypass grief and go straight to acceptance, because forgiveness allows us to maintain a relationship to the one who has hurt us, allowing us to keep that part of ourselves that knows itself only in relationship to that person, is not applicable to all who offer forgiveness that is out of place. While not a general theory of popular forgiveness, Frommer's conjecture is one way of accounting for the current fascination with forgiveness.

Popular forgiveness is forgiveness which offers something for nothing, acceptance of loss without mourning and grief. I can keep my attachments and let them go at the same time. All I have to do is forgive the one who has victimized me so that I can “let go” of my hate and loss without mourning the loss of those parts of myself by which I knew myself in relationship to my victimizer.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, well‐known author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, told a parishioner “I'm asking you to forgive because [your husband] doesn't deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman” (Wiesenthal, 1997, p. 176). Kushner seems to be telling his parishioner to forgive her husband so she can liberate herself from her angry attachment to him. What he does not tell her, what he seems unprepared to tell her, is that lacking her angry attachment to her husband she will finally have to mourn his loss.





I think it’s ok to be ambivalent; that we are not failures if we are slow to forgive and that we have to give grieving our loss as much attention as we are able to bear.  I wonder if the effort to understand and struggle with forgiveness is a kind of bypass of the hard, long work of grieving?

[Treasur]

Wow, Nerissa...that is some powerful stuff. Lots of layers.

I came back from my (late) beach walk thinky with compassion on my mind and then read this. There is a lot in there so I will re-read it but the two things that jumped out at me were about what forgiveness might really mean and that the loss is truly perhaps about the lost bit of me that existed in relationship with another.

Tbh I have released myself from any pressure to forgive. I'm not sure I can. I'm not sure I want to. I'm not sure I have received enough quid pro quo to try. And forgiving myself is a hard enough job. Not hating and not blaming my xh for everything bad is good enough for me right now.

The bit about the lost bit of me completely rings true. It was one of my biggest struggles after my father died. Being my father's daughter was a defining part of my sense of self, had been for years. Funnily enough, I said something en passant to my uncle the other day and he laughed and said 'well, you're your father's daughter!' So how could I still be his daughter if my father was gone? What did that mean? Could I do it and not live in a lost past? Or with people who never knew him or knew me as a daughter? With regard to my father, i think I have managed to pick out the bits that I can still carry with me but it is also true that some bits are gone bc they existed in the space between us and needed his contribution too. And it is static somehow bc there is no fresh interaction or evolution in the daughter bit of me.

So, compassion thoughts from the beach. And I speak only for me. My compassion has changed flavour over time. When the bond was still there, probably for both of us, my compassion was a function of love and about my h. Perhaps I thought it would be useful to him somehow. (I don't think it was though. And it probably added to my pain and bewilderment that it wasn't bc that reinforced how irrelevant I had become to him.).

Now it is more for me. I think it feels like a softer kind of acceptance rather than an angry hard FU kind. Practically speaking whether I feel compassion or not makes not a whit of difference to my long gone h as far as I can see...so in my circumstances, it must serve a purpose for me. It isn't about forgiveness...I can feel compassion but not forgive him (or others) for his cruelty and indifference. For me perhaps compassion feels like it reflects my own sense of reality before and after BD, what I saw and heard, and it leads me to a funny kind of 'well, s$it happens that isn't about me all over the place'. Compassion helps me put some of the weight down I think.

I don't know very much at all. But I do know that my h suffered pain, fear and distress bc I saw and heard it. I know that he lost things that had mattered very much to him before and that those things cannot be repaired if they still matter to him or ever do again. And that his actions created most of that which some part of him will know. I have compassion for all of that. I suspect my compassion may be more for who he was though than who he is if that makes sense. I simply don't have enough information about how/who xh is now to even know if anything warrants compassion. But I am content to trust my own eyes and ears, to trust that erasing most of two decades of your life is a big deal for any adult, to trust that my h broke in some way and was profoundly damaged by it, to trust that the person I knew would have not chosen this for himself or me. He still did, and it can't be undone, but the person I knew would have been horrified by it.

Perhaps my compassion for my h, as opposed to xh, is a way of protecting the reality of that lost relationship and part of that bit of me by believing that h was as I saw him? And that I was who I thought I was in that space maybe? The alternative I suppose without that compassion would be to accept that my reality was a lie, that the bond was one sided....and I don't think I want to live with that assumption. So, in a funny way, my compassion for my h is probably quite a selfish thing that serves more purpose for me than for him.

Would I feel compassion for xh if I had more information about the outcome of his choices for him? If he turned up asking for my support or obviously still broken or distressed? If he explained some of his choices or how he felt or why he was unwilling or unable to show compassion to me? If he felt like it was all a terrible mess that he was lost in? Or showed regret even? I don't know. Maybe. It wouldn't be the same kind of active compassion i suspect as when he was my h, but maybe. Maybe like listening to a hurting stranger?

Would I feel less compassion for xh if I knew he was chortling with delight and bouncing around his new life with a sense of glee and liberation? Probably. I'm arrogant ha ha but not arrogant enough to impose my compassion on someone who feels no need for it and sees no pain or loss. And that may be exactly how he feels. I simply don't know.

But I do know that my compassion for the h I saw in pain and distress does not require any further evidence or any more details about help, hindrances, ow or speculation about responsibility or even intent. The compassion is probably just about the simple high level reality that I could see. He was hurting, he hurt me and others, he destroyed things, I lost things bc of that. Both of us suffered I think but maybe in different ways. And my compassion is about accepting that it was painful and traumatic and sad and life altering for him as well as me. But I can feel it without needing to do anything more than feel it.

[Nerissa]

Treasur, maybe the compassion you have is

A) an understanding of H’s psychic pain ...which might be an embryonic stage of forgiveness which may lead to:

B) forgiveness in the sense of being an ideal
Virtue  of forgiveness as an understanding of human frailty.

The final stage - a complete personal and emotional
Forgiveness may well be impossible if we understand the unconscious as having no sense of time (there is no ‘past’ for the unconscious) and that the memory of the pain and the person who caused it will always remain, even if out of our awareness.

I am struck by the idea that premature forgiveness risks re traumatising and I ‘feel’ it:  little has jarred my psyche more than suggestions it’s time I got over it, or ‘it happens, move on’ or that I am headed for  bitterness.

 Some of my most powerful healing moments were when my therapist said things along the lines of:  “It’s a disaster. Your family is wrecked” (she has done a lot of grief work with me)

And my tutor said to me “he has taken away your future as you anticipated it.  There  is nothing ...nothing that he can ever do that will make amends”. Or when he said it is a catastrophe for my daughters and me.

That kind of validation of our reality, bleak though it seems, has had such power in helping me begin to come to terms with my situation.  The emotional power of the human recognition of having someone look directly at me and acknowledge my desolation has been essential for me and I shall never forget those moments or the people - friends as well as professionals - who gave them to me in a short but intense moment of communion.

[Treasur]

I agree Nerissa.
It was a life-altering horror for me when I was already grieving and vulnerable. It was a level of shock and pain that almost killed me. I got PTSD because it actually WAS traumatic and frightening. There was not one bit of my life that was not fundamentally changed by it.
It was a big deal.
I am grateful for anyone who can see that.
And usually want to spit in the eye of anyone who wants to make it anything less than what it was.

[Not Applicable]

OK, for the sake of being clear, this is the post I am talking about.

I just would like to ask, why is finding compassion and forgiveness for someone going to help you move on?  I see people in this forum who are stuck with a compassionate attitude and those who are stuck with a hateful attitude and those who are stuck claiming to have an ambivalent attitude but still seem obsessed with their MLCer. Which makes me wonder if moving on has nothing to do with the attitude we have toward the MLCer at all. In any case, the person is still obsessed with the MLCer and not moving on elsewhere.

I'm just musing and what's posted below are some of my own opinions and conclusions 'for the moment'.   It could change tomorrow.   

I think I’m interested in this topic for a couple of reasons.   First,,,as part of my healing and letting go journey I need to find some understanding, compassion and then forgiveness in order to shut the door once an for all on this painful period in my life.    Otherwise, the ‘what the hell happened’ of this time in my life might always occupy some headspace whether I like it or not.     

The second part is just plain and simple curiosity.    It’s the biggest mystery of my life - the wtf happened and why?   If I don’t need to know but just accept it, then fine,,, I do accept.   But I alo want to know and understand because that’s simply my nature.   I love a good mystery.   It doesn’t mean I am still emotionally attached, just curious.   Like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking were curious about the workings of the universe.   They didn’t cry in their pillow every night about it but they loved a good mystery and pursued it.    I have a psychology background so it’s natural I would be curious about the workings of the human mind especially when I have had a front row ticket to a lot of the goings on and the great damage caused.   But unlike Einstein or Hawking, I don't plan to make a career of it.   

For me and my h,,, the dynamic between us has absolutely changed and likely forever.   We’ve both changed and even though there may be a kernel of nostalgia about the life we once shared, and I know it’s gone forever.   It’s doubtful if the current dynamic between us would even support a friendship in the future.   But I still dwell on what was because it was good, and my therapist says I don’t need to understand it all but I do need to find compassion and forgiveness of my H to end the thoughts that always seem to be nearby.   

To answer the discussion question…. I think the affair does both - it hinders and helps but at different stages.    Someone in MLC is someone that cannot engage in introspection to work through what ails them.    That leaves external solutions.    I don’t know why that external solution has to be a romantic relationship when its a parent they have the unresolved issues with, but that’s what seems to be the case.   These MLCers meet someone who shares many traits of the parent with the most conflict.    It’s true in my H’s case.   His ow is hot and cold.   More cold when around other people, almost like she doesn’t want to let on to anyone how much she is into him, but when alone she often makes him feel like he’s the only man in the world.,,, as long as he does what she expects of him, and from what I've heard it's a hit and miss endeavor.   So this is the aspect that is similar to how it was with his mother.   She was quite dismissive of him, emotionally cold, emotional cruel, emotionally manipulative and so is his ow.   To this day he is a conflict avoiding people pleaser and always has been from a young age.   Craving his mother’s attention and barely getting a taste of it because she withheld it frequently and unpredictably.   This is why his ow can keep him hooked - by being exactly the same way.   

Is this how they choose their mlc partner then?   Or is it really because the ow is simply available as we often hear, or is it because they can recreate an unhealthy dynamic that needs fixing?   And this person also needs to be available because I think that part of the equation does need to be true.   Maybe it’s a mutual need to recreate some dynamic that fits for them both??   idk…   In this sense I think the relationship does help them in their crisis.   If they can only deal with issues externally, is there any other choice that through an unhealthy relationship?   A healthy relationship would not work because the original conflicted relationship was not healthy. 

Many people grow up with some major or minor conflict with one or both parents.   Dealing with the conflict means standing up for yourself, laying down boundaries to your parents who may not have treated you so well, and refusing to take any more abuse from them.  It takes great courage and emotional strength to do that with your parents but once done you can move forward with some kind of relationship peace.   If you manage to do that before you reach mid-life then you may not need a substitute down the road in the form of ow/om during an MLC. 

If you couldn’t do that with your parents, then a substitute in the form of ow/om may appear so you can have another stab at breaking free by standing up for yourself, laying down boundaries and refusing to take further abuse.   This is their chance to resolve the conflict - by breaking free from the emotional bonds.    So they need the ow/om to get this done.   They pick them so they can find the emotional strength to break free from them.    They don’t always succeed but stay entrapped and this is when the relationship with the AP holds them back from their journey.   They get stuck here because they can’t find the strength to break free.

I think the fact that ow/om are personality disordered is no accident, in fact it may be a requirement.   Some of the most damaged adults were raised by personality disordered parents.   To recreate that dynamic obviously a similarly disordered person is required.   These are not easy relationships to get out of but neither is it easy to break free from the dysfunctional parent relationship either.   If the ow/om relationship didn’t match closely enough then it wouldn’t be recreating the dynamic and it would then be easy to say bye bye to the AP but the original issues would remain instead of be resolved. 

So the MLCer gets stuck in the AP relationship when they fail to grow in maturity and emotional strength, just like they failed to do with the parental relationship they had conflict with.   They can’t fix the relationship or the dynamic but they must find the strength to pull away and make peace with it, otherwise MLC may continue until they do. 

Personally, I do think the affair is absolutely necessary in a MLC.    Without it what is the alternative external solution for those who can’t do it internally?    Believing this is true can give me some comfort knowing that the crisis really wasn’t about me or the marriage.   It also may lead to some compassion for the MLCer who unconsciously sets out to fix things but just can’t get there.   But I believe they did try through the ow/om albeit unconsciously to them and painfully to us.   If they could have chosen the outcome from the beginning of their MLC, I wonder how differently things would have turned out.   In my h’s case, I believe I know the answer.   In the early days,,, he was very aware the decisions he eventually made were not the ones he wanted to make.  He was so scared and clung to me like a drowning rat to a life boat.   He wanted so bad to not be drawn further into this R with the AP and said so many times but his strength was no match for the pull and eventually he let go and gave in from what may have been emotional exhaustion.    He has a life of sorts now with OW but she's in control just like his mother was once in control and he does what he knows from earlier patterns to gain her fickle approval.   His new life is nothing like it was or could have been if he found the strength he needed to break free.    And he knows it.   He tells me in various different ways.   So I have found some compassion for him and his struggle through MLC.   Next is forgiveness and once I’ve got that down…. I can let go too.   And stop ruminating about wtf happened and just live and enjoy my own new life.   I don't know who can help him now but it sure isn't me.  I doubt he is even aware of the gilded cage he's in and the similarity to his past, so he likely doesn't want help either.  He's doing his best to make the most of the life he's got now likely knowing that it's not as good as he once had.   But that pull to fix the past is still strong so it may be a decent trade off to him until one day he makes steps to emotional mature and gain enough strength to fight back and break free.   

All this above is just mho fwiw and is a conglomerate of all I've read and absorbed along the way since BD.   If I'm repeating it here it must mean it makes sense to me at some level otherwise I would have forgotten it by now as I have with so much else I've read.  Regardless it doesn't mean it's anything more than a bunch of personal thoughts.   I am always open to opposing thoughts and theories about the mystery of MLC.

[Nerissa]

I just would like to ask, why is finding compassion and forgiveness for someone going to help you move on?  I see people in this forum who are stuck with a compassionate attitude and those who are stuck with a hateful attitude and those who are stuck claiming to have an ambivalent attitude but still seem obsessed with their MLCer. Which makes me wonder if moving on has nothing to do with the attitude we have toward the MLCer at all. In any case, the person is still obsessed with the MLCer and not moving on elsewhere.

My belief is that it is explained by attachment that we don’t want to give up.  And if we do give it up we have to go through the painful Process of mourning.  We keep the attachment alive by keeping it in mind.  All quite natural.

Focusing on the the mysteries of mlc may help with understanding but it must also be seen as an intellectualising defence: those of us who feel that understanding will help have to recognise that I think.  While we intellectualise, we keep the ‘end’ at bay and thus also keep our painful feelings at bay.  Intellectualising is a defence against feeling.    It is perfectly useful and reasonable to do this until we are ready to feel those feelings and go through them without being utterly overwhelmed. It isn’t up to anyone except perhaps a therapist to tell People when they have to move on because until we are ready we just can’t - just as we cannot walk until  A broken leg is healed. 

I don’t want to be stuck forever In Unresolved grief, but I can’t hurry it either.  When we feel
Very stuck it's time for help I think and if we choose not to move on - well it’s not an absolute requirement for anyone to deal with it in a prescribed way. 

[OldPilot]

Forgiveness starts with yourself,
You can not forgive some one else until you forgive yourself.

I believe that is tied to healing and the excellent discussion and post by Anon.

[Treasur]

I just would like to ask, why is finding compassion and forgiveness for someone going to help you move on?  I see people in this forum who are stuck with a compassionate attitude and those who are stuck with a hateful attitude and those who are stuck claiming to have an ambivalent attitude but still seem obsessed with their MLCer. Which makes me wonder if moving on has nothing to do with the attitude we have toward the MLCer at all. In any case, the person is still obsessed with the MLCer and not moving on elsewhere.


It isn’t up to anyone except perhaps a therapist to tell People when they have to move on because until we are ready we just can’t - just as we cannot walk until  A broken leg is healed. 

I don’t want to be stuck forever In Unresolved grief, but I can’t hurry it either.  When we feel
Very stuck it's time for help I think and if we choose not to move on - well it’s not an absolute requirement for anyone to deal with it in a prescribed way.

I think Anon explained her POV pretty clearly. You and others may not feel the same; as Anon moves forward, she may change her mind.
But right now it seems she wants to shuck off some of the last bits and tie up some of her own loose threads.
She believes that finding some understanding and compassion will help her let go and shut the door on that bit of headspace.
She believes that her natural curiosity is looking at some loose ends that she is trying to explain to herself bc it was a mystery that changed the course of her life.
She wants to finish her own last bits of moving on and not being obsessed with her MLCer/mlc...and right now thinks that finding some compassion and tidying up a couple of her own last pieces in the puzzle will help her do that. If it doesn't, I guess Anon will try something else...
At least that is how I read where she's at.
I agree completely with OP about forgiving oneself as a first step in my case. Compassion for myself was a precursor to beginning to heal.

There is a danger GiG that we all can fall into of thinking that one LBS solution fits all perhaps? And so we try it but find it isn't quite what we need or we are not quite ready for it maybe. Ergo compassion will help some move on but keep others attached. Same with anger which motivates some to say FU and forge a brand new life and keeps others connected to their MLCer albeit in a negative way. Anon seems to know what she feels she needs and we can all learn by observation and our own trial and error.

[Anjae]

I'm really deeply confused, Anon. I thought you had an interested in the affair and if it hinders or helps because you were into reconnecting/reconciliation. If you are done, I don't understand why anything affair related matters or why is it so complicated to forgive.

RCR and HB have some ideas on the affair, but mostly they say OW/OM means nothing, it is just a distraction. As it was always said on HS. OW/OM is just the person who is willing and is a sympthom, not the cause of MLC.

Many Psychoanalysts don't really believe in the possibility of true forgiveness because the unconscious never forgets, so any forgiveness lives alongside anger within the unconscious and the best we can hope for is a kind of ambivalence. 

Bizarre. Forgiveness and forget are different things. I have been using meditation which has a different view on forgiveness.

And my tutor said to me “he has taken away your future as you anticipated it.  There  is nothing ...nothing that he can ever do that will make amends”.

This, I agree with. No amount of possible future amends will make up for all that was lost. However, I separate it from forgiveness.

It was awful, a world built for 20 years, with lifelong plans, a lifestyle, all gone because of someone's actions/MLC.

[KeepItTogether]

In any case, the person is still obsessed with the MLCer and not moving on elsewhere.

/quote]

This is a possibility. But people process in different ways and speeds. For me, talking over the issues and educating myself on MLC and OW dynamic have absolutely helped me in my detachment efforts. I get that it (MLC/Affair) has nothing to do with me. But, well, I never would have known that but for discussions such as these. Thank you Anon.

Nerissa--great post. It makes so much sense.