How can you forgive someone who was never sorry?

Question

What does forgiveness feel like?

How do you forgive a person who you don't know and will never see again?

everytime I try to forgive -for myself- I try to see that person as a human with faults, but as soon as I come close to letting go and forgiving, the hatred and anger comes back. I hate this person, but I want to let it go, because I hear it's good for your soul to forgive.

I am an Atheist so please don't preach God to me.

Read the question: I don't know him, and will never see him again! It's not my ex, that was easy to forgive.

Answer 1

Forgivness has nothing to do with the person or thing that happened. That has always been hard for my mind to wrap around. And I struggle with it often.
The act of being sorry is very personal. Most often the person who you need to let go of or forgive doesn't have a clue or doesn't care what you think or feel. They might be awear that they did something nasty or wrong to you, but they more on and depending on personality....they just move on.

It is said that the feelings you have of hate or hurt are your feelings...they are like you taking posion & expecting it to kill the other person. That is an exageration....but it is a way to look at how anger and hate hurts us & not the person we are feeling it for.

You can have anger and hate for something or someone you don't know, as you have said. It is ok to have those feelings becasue we are human. But, to carry those feelings around with you for extended periods of time is toxic...to you. And whatever you hate feels nothing.

It is difficult to forgive when the thing you hate doesn't stop.
The action of forgiving doesn't mean that you condone or agree with that which you are angery with. It just means that you have felt the pain and you let go and move on. If you can't let go and go on the pain you feel will become disabiliting to you. Thus the action of forgivness is for YOU.....not for anything else unless it is a person close to you that you need closure with.

With some hate or anger it can drive us to make changes in the world or in our lives. If I am angry with the messed up medical care in the United States.....it does no good for me to sit home and be angry with it. There is proactive forgivness. You can choose to sit in the anger or do something productive about it and doing that something can give you positive energy , where as the anger is toxic for you.
And only you are in control of taking action or wallowing in the toxic feelings.

Thus, again the act of forgivness has little to do with the person or thing that has hurt you. It has to do with your own way of handeling it.

Sometimes there is little to do except move on.

I have look at carrying around unforgiveness this way.
I can imagine a whole bunch of lugage in which I have symbolically packed my anger in. One bag can be full of angry feeling twords how I feel my parents failed me. Another bag is full of stuff I have done that I can't forgive myself for.
Another bag can be full of all that I think has been unfair to me.....and that is like a load of bricks. As I fill up all this baggage and carry it around I am toxic and weary. I can't be the best person I can be or be efficient in this one chance in life that I have. Or, I can open up each bag and acknowledge the pain and tell yourself you can forgive this junk (knowing that you can't forget it) The painful stuff is eventually taken out of your bagage and put in a place where it can't continue to hurt you. There will be times that you pick up a bag or two or maybe rummage through a bag, but as you learn to let go aka forgive your spirit will feel freer and have more peace.

Many people never forgive and their lives are painful & dreary
Other people manage to balance those bags and deal with them when they need to. Very few can be totally fee of such bagage unless they are pure of all humanity.....not one human is.

If you can learn that the defination of forgiveness is inward, and not the remedy or act of the person being sorry about it. And definatly not the act of someone righting what was wrong.

It takes self control and a mind that can controll unhealthy impulses that can destroy who you are.

Very little forgiveness has anything to do with the word sorry.
That is a misconception of ours.

Forgiveness isn't easy. But, it is essential in wellbeing.

Forgivness can make you feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off your shoulders. It can free you up to do positive things. It can put your whole life back in perspective. If feels like you have taken a breath of fresh air, have hope and peace.

You can look at what needs forgivness and say boldly .....
"you can't take my peace and my power from me anymore...I know you don't comprehend being sorry, but I realize that I can't change you, I can only change how I react around you"

Forgivness feels great.

You might be tempted to pick up that heavy bag of pain and anger......look at it, asknowledge that it hurt you. tell yourself that you don't need it anymore, put it back in the bag and lock it up again. Forgivness is rarely a final closure, but an action that begets a new way of thinking and dealing with all that happens to you.

The pain, if bad enough can leave a huge scar which will fade over the years until you can barely see it or hardly remember how it happened.

Answer 2

This isn't about the other person ...It's about YOU !

This anger & frustration will eat you away from the inside unless you take the steps to deal with it !

The object of your anger probably isn't aware of or concerned by what you are internalising so bite the bullet & let it go !

Try writing it all down , warts & all...put all of your feelings into words & when you have dumped the lot you can then decide as to whether to pass it on to the person concerned or to simply file it away under dealt with !

Remember , to forgive or not to forgive is your choice so it therefore follows that if you choose not to , you are only adding to your pain , anger & frustration !

Either way , good luck !

Answer 3

Forgiveness is more for yourself than it is for the person who has done something.

You forgive by not allowing that person to hurt you any more than they already have. If my boyfriend cheated on me, and then left without saying that he was sorry, I can choose to dwell on what he did to me and wonder why and wonder what would have happened if I handled it another way... Or I choose to forgive him - I let him off the hook, so that I can get on with my life. If I continue to be mad at him, then I am trapped by what he did. If I say "He did wrong, but I'm letting him off the hook this time" then the event no longer has a hold on me.

Forgiveness feels like freedom more than anything, even though feelings are fickle and not what you can base truth on. Forgiveness is focusing on the person rather than the thing they did... people make bad choices, really really bad choices sometimes, but it's made worse by focusing on the bad choices.

I hope that helps :)

Answer 4

I'm neither athiest, nor Christian, so I can't give you God and won't attempt it.

But the issue of forgiveness doesn't have anything to do with whether the other person's sorry about, except on a shallow, superficial, meaningless level.

Forgiveness is a gift to yourself. A means of distancing yourself from negative experience. Doesn't matter whether you're forgiving yourself, or forgiving someone else.

But on some other, maybe less important level, forgiveness is the great leveller. It's a means of establishing the boundaries between what's 'yours', and what belongs to someone else.

Forgiveness is a sort of official stamp on our lives, an affirmation that we're flawed, we're humans, we're all in the same boat, and we all make 'mistakes' and lousy judgements about what we want to do and how we want to do it.

Then there's back to the matter of boundaries. Failure to forgive is an inner-demand on those around you to behave as you wish them to behave. An attempt to control the choices, limit them to satisfy your own values.

Poisonous stuff.

Answer 5

I have a good friend. He is an athiest. when he went to Iraq he said, I am a soldier and a scientist. Why do people pray for me? I don't want people to pray for me, I am an athiest. Pray for someone who believes. Pray for my mom.

He wrote this to me in an email between bombings.

I wrote him back. If you are a scientist then do you not believe in the power of the mind and the theory of collective unconcious? It is a proven theory that those who have a belief can cause something to happen if together all the powerful positive or negative thoughts are thrown a certain direction.

He agreed. And, he came back from Iraq along with all 22 men he was in charge of during his stay for the voting of a new leader in their country.

Forgiveness is in your heart. You can do it and if you don't you will carry around a black hole forever because you won't be able to forgive even yourself. Forgive yourself for not being able to forgive and then go and forgive. It doesn't mean you have to forget.

Answer 6

Forgiveness is the gift that is for the giver. The receiver need never know, they may not even want it. It is simply "letting go" and moving on. Sometimes you can actually feel something leave you. That is the feeling or energy that they stirred up in you to begin with.

Answer 7

Leelee:
don't you think the Iraqi people pray that the soldiers stop killing their children? Don't you think that Africans pray for food and shelter? Don't you think if prayer worked there would be less evil in the world?

Btw, not all Atheists are scientists. I happen to be an Atheist who is very spiritual, just not to a God who is invisible. I pray to the Goddess mother Earth, who gives life and nourishes it. I also believe in karma and the energy that is in everything in the universe. I'mok doesn't have to pray to an external being to find forgiveness in her heart for the mean guy that hurt her , she can find the strength to do it from her own power within.

It will heal in time, you just need more time.

Answer 8

you know you forgive someone when:
all the memories that you have are no longer bad , well not good either but just grey. you don't have to like or love someone to forgive him. you just have to ignore HIM. scream, cry, break everything around you, talk about it for days if you want with your best friend or even write everyting down and then put fire to the paper....until the feeling of pain pass. and it will....

Answer 9

When a person learns that taking offense is not a condition, but a choice, granting forgiveness will become easier to do.

Choose not to take offense, but drop your end of the rope of contention. That is all you can do to make things right with yourself. What others do is not under your power or control.

Answer 10

I've been asking myself the same question, i had someone to do something to me, they admitted it but have never apologized for it, and really i don't expect for them to say they're sorry for hurting me. I'm finding it hard to forgive them, and really i wonder why i have to. But i realize in order for me to move forward with my life i have to find it in my heart to forgive them, not for them but for me I don't know when i'll be able to do this!