I do not think my H has ever forgiven his mother. He is a grudge holder to the extreme, and I believe his abandonment issues are playing deeply into our own dynamics.
Probably not. I didn't really understand forgiveness, or resentment for that matter, until the last few years. I knew I was unhappy about a lot of things, but I didn't really do anything with it...it just sat there, and I continued to be unhappy about it. I think if people understood what a true gift forgiveness is to yourself, everyone would start trying it.
One thing I was thinking the other day was that you're starting to really focus on H, on his lack of trying, on his lack of forgiveness, etc. You need to try to turn this back on yourself and focus on the things you have control of.
I had decided at one point I was going to stop apologizing for things in the past, and I stuck to that for a while, but it just kept coming up in our discussions. It was a real sticking point for W. So I changed gears and decided I would be very specific about what I was sorry about, try to share a couple of things every week. The last couple of years my W has done a lot of hateful things, but I can only control me....so I focused on that.
She told me once that those apologies did more to mend our relationship than anything else I'd done during our M. So my point is two-fold....focus on you and maybe try something new.
