Recommitment issues, post affair

[sage]

OK, Sage, I'm going to go nerd on you here, since I know you are an engineer, as am I. I tend to think of forgiveness as a discrete function, a step function. A "0" or a "1". You start out unforgiving (toward your S), you make a conscious decision to forgive, you forgive, and then forever afterward, you live with that. You can't take it back, depending on circumstances or new developments. Your S lives in a state of being forgiven. Forgiveness, in that sense, is a commitment a bit like a marriage vow. Once made, never to be retracted. That doesn't mean that you forgive for future acts - those have to be dealt with as they come along - but it does mean that you quit thinking about the question of whether to forgive the past infidelity, in all its different parts.

The problem that I have, given that I'm using this understanding of forgiveness, is that I don't want to forgive, and don't want to tell her that I have forgiven, until I'm ready to forgive forever (not allowing myself to revisit the decision).

brian -- I think I didn't express myself too well -- I too think that forgiveness is a vow, is binary, isn't circumstancial once given...what I was trying to articulate is that I'm not there yet. Thus the "continuous decision" (analog world) is to try to forgive....maybe that makes more sense.

Partly my point is that I found myself really resisting some hard and conflicting feelings that I was having because I've been telling myself "well, I've forgiven him so you can't feel that way". I had to come to grips with the idea that I'm still processing it...I know I will get there....I'm just not there yet.

I like tbone's post to you.

Sage