NY, I really do appreciate your insight and it makes me take another look at things sometimes. The thing is (and maybe this is something I have to get over) if someone comes up to me on the street and gives me a good stiff kick to the groin and looks at me on the ground laughing, I don't think I forgive that person for the wrong he committed. If that makes me less of a person, whether in God's eyes or in other peoples eyes, I can't help that.
At the risk of being flippant (which is not my intention), I understand that Jesus was perfect but I'm not. I never will be. So for me to sit and look in the mirror , or even look into my WAW's eyes and say that I forgive her for what she has done...it's not going to happen, not now at least.
But your W didn't really come up to you and start kicking your groin, that's saying that what she did was intentional just to hurt you, and it wasn't. That hurt and devastation was a tremendous repercussion of what she did, but WASs do these things because of the pain they have that they're trying to escape, not because they want to hurt you. It's "victim thinking" to think that's what they're about.
While scripture maintains that Christ was perfect and we're not, scripture also says to emulate him and put on his thinking, right? So it must be do-able. Anyway, I was just making a point about how to view forgiveness, really. I'm not a bible thumper or really even into religion other than a study of it many years ago. It's that when these christian counselors want to adhere to their understanding of biblical protocol regarding forgiveness makes me wonder why they overlook the example I gave and make it more difficult for their patients to heal. In your case, the counselor is advocating that you adhere to an example of how God forgives sins, and though admittedly you find Christ's example difficult to live by, how the hell are you supposed to live by God's? You need to be forgiving in a way that actually works for you. You're not in the business of forgiving sins anyway, you're in the business of forgiving people. Scripturally, Christ is recorded as saying to forgive your enemies ... Oh for crying out loud, when do enemies show remorse and repentance?... and to heap love on top of bad things done to you. Other things that come to mind are, remove the timber from your eye first, who can cast the first stone, and a ton of others ... aren't these all about accepting the human condition as a flaw that affects us all and not being righteous and angry towards others?
I'm not trying to poke at your belief system. The point is that you can't heal without forgiving, if forgiving means that you let go of the hurt. Somehow, people equate letting go of the hurt as meaning they condone the actions of the WAS, and so therefore maintain this righteousness that the WAS has to express remorse before they can be forgiven. But what happens if the WAS never expresses remorse or expresses it less then the way you'd need it to be expressed? Then it suggests that the hurt is never let go of, and that results in keeping a wound alive indefinitely. And in your case, to be honest brother, you keep your wound quite well, and it keeps festering and manifesting as anger and obsession. I see it. You may think you're moving on, but you're doing so while forming a big old scar on your heart. That's not good. Why should your healing yourself be so dependant on what others do or don't do? It doesn't have to be like this for you.
