ImNotHer stated: source post
What is the meaning of forgiveness?
To allow one back into your inner life once you've attempted to throw them out of it.
Is it hard for you to forgive?
I never expect to have to. Either they haven't crossed the point of me pushing them away in the first place, or they've pushed me hard enough that I won't ever have the room to do it. There's little to no grey area there, as I'll take a lot before saying "enough".
There's a few in my past I have not forgiven and never plan to forgive, and these people are exceptional in that way. Unlike others I've met who claim it to be draining to not let things go, I don't. I am perfectly fine with not forgiving a person as that means that they are no longer a part of my life, no longer a painful inconvenience that'd serve to bring me down. It's better this way for someone like me, as I make that line hard enough to cross to warrant it's justification.
It seriously takes a lot for me to feel the need to kick someone out of my life, as I tend to find it easier to accept who they are and work within that to get the things that I need.
Are you against it?
Some people need it to find closure, to quell their own inner dialogue about the dramas connected to it. I'm not against it, and I'll play along with it if it's what they need to continue, but I don't really work within that schematic when it comes to myself. I don't take it seriously in a relatable way, but I recognize that they need it and that, if I am to get things back to status quo, that I'll need to put the effort in sometimes. It usually happens over a miscommunication, misunderstanding, or a sensitivity, so it's not usually that much work to fix.
With the sort of company I tend to keep, it doesn't come up too often. What behaviors I've expressed have usually had reasons they could recognize behind them, so the lack of mystery tends to make for less reason to apologize. In many cases I'm telling others to not apologize to me, that it's a wasted effort when I'm not expecting it, and from that, strangely, a closer relationship tends to develop from it. When they don't think things will hurt me, the talks can become more real instead of fearing the emotional minefield that most people make socializing out to be.
Is there something you did that you wish someone else would forgive you for?
While I'd not expect someone to in the same light as my refusal to do so when pushed to that point, I really thought this would be a yes, but I can't seem to think of any examples. I talk out the problems that exist and fight for closure instead of leaving things unresolved, and don't find myself in situations where a a demand for an apology is needed with most people. I thought that I might want that from my ex-fiance, but then I remembered that we really split apart from the relationship being a toxic rerun as opposed to a matter of "sorry".
I don't tend to do much that pushes the need for forgiveness unless they're close enough to feel like family, and that's been very few people. People knowing who I am tends to have them either get over themselves or move on otherwise. I typically prefer the company of those that don't need that sort of constant validation personally.
What about forgiving yourself?
If it's towards myself, it's me dealing with me, and I don't really tend to think of myself in a way where I'd ever need to say sorry to myself. While there's guilt from time to time about past actions, it's always been about what happened to another, while what self-blame there's been hasn't ever been about forgiving, it's been about either becoming better than that or accepting it about myself.
Forgiveness just isn't the sort of thing I think about unless another person wields it as a requirement for their own functioning. Towards myself, I just aim to correct it. It's not like I could ever kick myself out of my own inner life unless I were to dissociate from myself that hard.