Forgiving someone else

I am not nearly so bad at forgiving people who hurt me. In fact, most of the time I used to assume that they were correct in hurting me because I must have deserved it. Again, thanks adoption.

I know that forgiveness is something that is given. You can forgive someone to help yourself process what happened and move on. I learned in my 30's that you don't have to forgive and forget. Sometimes you just forgive, because forgiveness is mostly to prevent eating yourself up with pain.

I shall talk here about my marriage. I have forgiven, but perhaps not completely. Or maybe not forgotten.

My husband is a very closed off person. He doesn't listen well (perhaps it's cultural, perhaps personal) and can appear icy if you don't know him. I know that he loves me.

And yet for the first 11 years of our relationship, I was basically invisible. As I have written elsewhere, he put his mother ahead of me and let her abuse me. So did I, but I excuse myself because of my self-loathing issues and because it is difficult to stand up to a domineering mother who isn't your own and who speaks another language. It was also shocking to me because my mother is so very different. I was not raised to treat guests and family in a way that even mildly approached rudeness. How was this happening? And yet when I brought things up to him, he told me I was imagining it. Great.

We had two children. He wasn't present for me, wasn't emotionally there. I told him over and over that I was alone and doing all the work. He promised to change, but didn't.

I felt myself slipping away. There finally came a crisis, and he committed to changing. He has changed, slowly. But not in ways that make me feel loved. It's really hard for me to stay engaged. I really like him, and even love him, but truth is, he will probably never love me the way I need to be loved. If I had known things about him at the time and had more self-confidence, I probably never would have married him. But I did.

We talked about divorce on and off. In some ways it seems unthinkable, in others, the only right answer. Ah, life is complicated.

I have committed to trying a little bit longer, taking things day by day. I need to forgive him for how he was those first 13 years. It is not easy. I struggle with it.