Sorry this is a long post:
Forgiveness is something I have been reading about for awhile now. It is not about reconciling but about letting go of the anger and the fear. It is a slow process but it is a choice. I know my h is remorseful about what he did but I am afraid to open up my heart again because I donât think I could go through this again. I have been reading a book by Annette Stanwick called âForgiveness: The Mystery and Miracleâ. It is a very religious book but it talks about voicing your pain in a victimâs impact statement. She states that giving voice to your pain helps the healing process. It would go something like this;
H when you choose to have an affair, break your vows, betray our love, lie to me, disrespect me, I felt a loss of self worth, abandoned, like I lost my foundation and safety, hurt so much that it felt like my heart is in a vise, rejected. As a result of your actions I am more paranoid and cynical, fear to get close again, have anxiety attacks, constantly on my guard with others and am ashamed. When thoughts of this enter my mind I want to cry, lash out at you, run away, end my life, hide so you will never find me, hurt you back, and scream to let everyone know what you did. The impact has been to change our relationship by the loss of innocence of our love, distrust you, given me nightmares, given me a STD, cause me to loose the ability to focus, caused me to feel like I have lost my mind. In spite of the pain and the journey of recovering from such a loss there are some important things I have learned throughout this experience. I have grown as a person and have found my self and self worth. We now have a much better marriage and know how to communicate better. We now know to show each other our love in the way that we need to see it. With Gods goodness I am able to look past this terrible thing you did to us. What I am about to say doesnât erase or excuse what you chose to do because we have to live with the consequences, but comes from the depth of my soul. I believe you have a wounded heart, you struggle with your own self esteem and self worth, you didnât think of the hurt you would cause and you learned from your family as a child to separate your work life completely from your home life. I believe that your selfish act was not done to hurt me. I believe your actions were out of a selfish need that you acted on. So I forgive you and I know that God loves you as much as he loves me and that he forgives you. I hope that you can forgive your self sometime. I promise to try and give up the fear that is holding me back.
What do you think if I say this to H, too harsh? Do you think this will be hurtful to H? I feel like I have to address this out loud and forgive him when I do.