​Excerpts from How Can I Forgive You? by Janis Spring

WHAT THE OFFENDER MUST DO TO EARN GENUINE FORGIVENESS
 
SIX CRITICAL TASKS FOR EARNING FORGIVENESS

1. Determine mistaken assumptions about forgiveness and how they block efforts to earn it.
2. Bear witness to the pain you caused.
3. Apologize genuinely, non-defensively, responsibly.
4. Seek to understand your behavior and reveal the truth about yourself to the person you harmed.
5. Work to earn back trust.
6. Forgive yourself for injuring another person.

 
Determine mistaken assumptions about forgiveness and how they block efforts to earn it. 

• I can’t begin to earn forgiveness until I feel perfectly safe, comfortable, and ready.
  • You’ll probably never feel completely safe, comfortable, and ready – how could you, when you have to submit to your accuser’s judgment? Owning up to them is bound to make you squirm.
• I deserve to be forgiven.
  • If you assume that you categorically deserve to be forgiven and that you possess this right simply because you are human – you make it less likely that the hurt party will forgive you.
  • If you don’t try to earn forgiveness, the person you hurt can offer you only a cheap substitute.
  • If you want compassion, benevolence, love, and forgiveness, you need to act in ways that elicited feelings from the person you violated.
• If I admit I was wrong and work to earn your forgiveness, I will seem weak and vulnerable in your eyes and mind.
  • You are more likely to come across as strong, not weak, when you admit wrongdoing, and less likely to project strength when you insist that you’re always right. You don’t relinquish power when you work to earn forgiveness; you give the hurt person back the power you took from them. You restore the balance between you.
  • Be careful not to confuse humbling acts of apology with weakness and vulnerability. It takes character to embrace the truth. It takes resolve to trade in your pride for something you value more – your integrity, their forgiveness.
  • If you’re courageous enough to apologize and then work to prove it, you shouldn’t assume the person you hurt will try to shame you and gloat over their victory. It’s more likely that your confession will win their respect and diminish their need to punish you.
  • If acts of contrition make you feel weak and defenseless, it may be because of the personal meaning you attached to apologies, not because the hurt party will use your remarks against you. Your fear of being hurt may say more about your formative life experiences than about anything that’s happening today. If whenever you apologize you expect to be trampled on, it may be wise to look into your past for the reasons why.
• I’m not worthy of your forgiveness.
  • To ask for forgiveness, you must believe you’re worthy of being forgiven. If you assume that you have nothing redeeming to offer, or that you’re too evil or empty to make good, you’ll have no reason to try.
• Nothing can undo the wrong I’ve done.
  • You believe that no words or gestures, not yours or anyone else’s, can undo the damage because your offense was too heinous for anyone to forgive. Be careful not to assume your efforts won’t make a difference. There’s no way to know unless you try.
• When I seek forgiveness, I admit I’m a bad person.
  • You may think that if you hate what you did, you must hate who you are. This is a crippling assumption. The challenge is to be appropriately critical of your behavior without turning against yourself. If you can be appropriately critical of what you did and allow yourself to feel guilt without hating who you are and feeling shame, you’re more likely to own up to your behavior and make amends.
• You’ll never forgive me, so why should I try?
  • If this is your position do you really believe it or are you using it to justify your self-doubt and reluctance to do the hard work of earning forgiveness? Are you speaking the truth or expressing your sense of hopelessness or helplessness? 
• You should know I’m sorry.
  • Your assumption that they should be able to read your heart and mind may be no more than an excuse to avoid apologizing. If you don’t express your remorse, all you can expect for your cheap silence is cheap forgiveness – or their wrath.
• If I work to earn forgiveness, I’m saying that I’m the only one who did wrong.
  • Acknowledging your wrongdoing is not the same as declaring that the hurt person is innocent. The forgiveness you seek is only for the damage you caused. Exploring your partners role in the betrayal can only be explored after trust begins to be rebuilt and your apology is the first step in achieving that.
• It makes no sense to try to earn your forgiveness if I don’t intend to have an ongoing relationship with you.
  • Most people won’t bother to seek forgiveness from someone they don’t plan to see you again but it’s still an honorable thing to do and both parties will feel better engaging in the process.

 
Bear witness to the pain you caused.

• Encourage the person who you hurt to share their pain.
  • To defend against feeling dependent and vulnerable, they may silence themself in a number of ways. They may forgive you too easily. They may go numb. They may go along to get along, as though They have forgiven you, while inside they continue to storm. Or they may retreat into and shut you out.
  • If you’re a conflict avoider, their silence will seem preferable to rage. But don’t be fooled. Muffled pain is just as problematic as uncontrolled fury, and perhaps even more dysfunctional. If you don’t draw them out and encourage them to talk through the injury, they’ll never get close to you or forgive you. If you want to rebuild the bond, you, the offender, must regularly invite and embolden them to reveal how deeply you have hurt them. This opening up to you is an act of intimacy, a first step in lowering the barrier between you.
• Initiate discussion about the injury.
  • Each time you bring up the violation, you let the hurt party know that it’s on your mind, to end that they're not alone with it. When you demonstrate that you won’t forget what you did and will continue to be mindful of its lessons, you help release them from their preoccupation with the injury. If you want your partner to move on, you must pay attention to their pain. If you don’t, they will.
• Listen to the hurt person’s pain with an open heart.
  • You may want to run from the anguish you inflicted on another human being. What good can come from allowing them to pour out their grief, you may wonder, except to punish you and make you feel small? But listening helps them open up to you and let you back into their life. You can’t skip this step. And they can’t come forward, trust you, or forgive you until you convince them that you understand and care about the damage you did.
  • How can a person forgive you if you’re indifferent to the suffering? They can’t until you reach out and hold their pain. That means you put aside your own feelings, your own needs, your own agenda; that you dismantle your defenses and justifications, even your version of the violation, and experience their pain as they experienced it, as though it were your own.
  • You shouldn’t try to cheer them up -- they're likely to see this as a manipulation to discount or dispel her suffering for your own advantage. Better just to listen and allow yourself to be affected by their story. Try to taste their fear, sadness, and dignity, even if you’ve never been hurt in the same way and even if you believe your offense isn’t as serious as they make it out to be. Allow yourself to enter their world and resonate with their grief.
• A lesson in listening
  • Healing Conversations: What to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say by Nance Guilmartin
  • Why Marriages Succeed or Fail by John Gottman.
  • The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction by Rebecca Shafir.
  • Nonverbal communication
    • Listening with both your eyes and ears
    • Being respectful of pauses in silence is in your conversation and not jumping into rush away the pain
    • Monitoring your tone of voice to convey the sincerity of your concern
    • Using body language (leaning towards the heart party) to foster connection
  • Listening to both soft and hard emotions
    • If the person you hurt expresses her pain with “soft” emotions such as sadness, shame, or grief try to mirror (reflect back) what she needs you to understand.
    • If she expresses her pain with “hard” emotions -- bitterness or rage – it may help to see past their tough exterior and connect with the scared, bruised person crouching inside. Though you may experience them as trying to push you away, they may want nothing more than for you to come closer. Before you respond with anger yourself you can help her by saying, “I want to know your pain and it makes sense why you would be angry but it’s hard for me to hear your feelings when you talk to me this way.”
    • Listening is one of the most powerful healing gestures you can make. It cuts through the hurt party’s sense of denigration and isolation and encourages them to re-attach to you. You’re being fully present to validate their pain helps them to trust you with their feelings. Being there for them, warmly and attentively, knocks down the wall between you and opens the way to forgiveness.

 
Apologize genuinely, non-defensively, responsibly.
 
Why Are Apologies So Important?

• An apology is more than a simple “I’m sorry.” It’s also a way of saying that you take responsibility for your actions, care deeply about the pain you caused, and intend never to repeat the transaction. 
• When you fail to apologize, you’re likely to feel bad about yourself. You usually know when you’ve wronged someone and have to live with that knowledge. If you try to minimize or dismiss it, you’re still in your shame. Apologize, and you begin to re-create yourself, restore your self-respect, and repair the tear within. Integration takes place. You know you did wrong. You know you can do better.
• Your apology conveys respect for the person you harmed. You admit that they deserve better and that you crossed the line. This admission humbles you, elevates them and restores a measure of equilibrium.
• Your apology may help to reconnect two of you. When you come clean, you not only disarm them and allow them to feel more kindly toward you, but you clear your own conscience and are more likely to allow yourself to reattach to them. Once you have apologized you feel free to be vulnerable and intimate.

 
What Makes for a Good Apology?
 
Take responsibility for the damage you caused.

• For your apology to take hold, you must acknowledge your role: “I am the perpetrator. I did this to you.” As Beverly Flanagan, author of Forgiving the Unforgivable writes, “Someone is wrong. Someone must be identified. Then someone can be forgiven.”
• As part of the healing process, the injured party needs to assign blame and to have you, the offender, except a culpability. An effective apology, therefore, is not some vague reference to the fact that someone, somehow got hurt, but appointed acknowledgment that “I wronged you, and for that I’m sorry.”

 
Make your apology personal.

• The most effective apology is exquisitely personal. It’s not just an admission that “I did something wrong.” It’s an admission that, “I wronged you. I did this to you.” What helps the hurt party heal and move the forgiveness process forward is not just that you care about violating your own standard of conduct but that you care about having violated them.

 
Make your apology specific.

• When you apologize, don’t just say, “I’m sorry.” You need to capture exactly what you’re sorry for. You need to describe not just the broad brushstrokes of the injury but the fine details. You need to be boldly concrete, apologizing not only for hurting someone but for precisely how you hurt them. Only then will they trust that you appreciate the harm caused and will never cross that line again.
• When you are apologizing for intimate betrayal, it is important that you try to list everything you’ve done to hurt them over the years -- not just a single, obvious, mega-wound you just inflicted.
  • I exposed you to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases each time I slept with someone else.
  • I kept secrets from you and relegated you to the role of an outsider who knew less about me than some stranger.
  • I made you doubt yourself and question your place in the world.
  • I tarnished many otherwise happy memories of our life together.
  • I blamed you when I felt lonely, instead of addressing my own lifelong sense of loneliness.
  • I shut you out when I was feeling angry and frustrated about our relationship, instead of talking to you directly about what was bothering me.
  • I drank too much and worked excessive hours, increasing the distance between us.
  • I gave up our relationship without letting you know, making it impossible for us to work things out together.

 
Make your apology deep.

• If you want to be forgiven, you have to cough up the whole wretched truth of what you did. Don’t be content with easy admissions; keep scraping away to uncover deeper, darker truths. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, you’re probably doing something right.

 
Make your apology heartfelt.

• Sometimes people apologize well, but for selfish reasons – to rid themselves of guilt, to reduce conflict and make their lives easier, to show themselves off to God or friends as decent human beings. Your apology is likely to fall on deaf ears if your heart isn’t in the right place. Anyone can be trained to utter polished words of remorse. The challenge is to experience and convey “a transformation of the heart.” For you to generally be forgiven your remorse must be real, profound, enduring.
• How do you convey a heartfelt apology? One way is through a tone of voice that is gentle, warm, and earnest. Another is through appropriate body language. Sit face-to-face and look into each other’s eyes. Leaning toward each other. Speak very slowly letting the injured party feel the sincerity and absorb the truth of your words. 
• Genuine humility must lie at the core of your apology. Only when you strip away your sense of self-importance and shed your defensive tactics can you begin to convince the injured person that you’re truly sorry.

 
Make your apology clean. 

• The most effective apologies are pure, straightforward, and uncomplicated, with no buts, no fancy embellishments, or caveats. Qualified apologies tend to backfire. When you try to pass off your misconduct as a mistake, and insignificant event, and understandable reaction to their misbehavior, the person you hurt is likely to feel even more bitter and enraged than before. It’s up to them to see the injury in a softer light, not you. At times like these, it helps to remember that when you acknowledge blame, the hurt person is more likely to acknowledge theirs too.

 
Apologize repeatedly.

• For “surface wounds,” a single apology may be enough to win forgiveness. But for intimate betrayal you will need to apologize again and again, particularly if you hope to reconcile. Your partner most likely wants you to be sorrowful with them – to carry the sorrow the way they carry the sorrow, to walk the walk with them every day.

 
An apology goes beyond a confession.

• When you confess, you admit the wrong you did. When you apologize, you express remorse for the wrong you did. Each response has its value. A confession is a statement of fact. An apology is a feeling statement that goes beyond the facts and reveals how you feel about them. Both confession and apology can reduce shame, foster dialogue, and repair the connection between you. But only an apology, which shows regard for the hurt party’s feelings, can earn forgiveness.

 
Your apology needs to go beyond an expression of regret.

• An expression of regret is intrapersonal – something you offer by and for yourself. It reveals how you feel about your behavior not how you feel about the person you harmed. It doesn’t necessarily acknowledge that you care about them or even that you believe what you did was wrong. It may be nothing more than an expression of displeasure that you stirred up trouble for yourself and made your life more complicated. 
• An apology, in contrast, is interpersonal. It’s all about your feelings towards the person you harmed. It conveys, sometimes explicitly, you were promised never to injure them again.

 
An apology needs to go beyond “icing on a rancid cake.”

• When you hurt someone, you may want to show remorse by doing nice things for them. But these loving behaviors, no matter how sincere, cannot substitute for a straightforward, heartfelt apology. As collateral gifts, they may convey an honest wish to make up but they’re not enough to earn forgiveness. If you want to heal an injury you can’t just have fun together or offer superficial gifts. You must directly address the pain you caused.

 
Examples of bad apologies.

• A bad apology is everything a good apology isn’t. In a bad apology, you deny, discount or dismiss the injury. You convey the attitude that you’re terribly put out having to make amends. You let the injured party know how ponderous and silly this process of earning forgiveness is. You apologize in ways that block healing and keep the injury alive.

• The two second apology: “Sorry.”
• The sanitized apology “I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong.”
• The shirk responsibility apology: “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
• The lack of ownership apology: “I’m sorry your feelings are hurt.”
• The perfunctory apology: “As I’ve said before, I’m sorry.”
• The vindictive apology: “I’ll show you what it means to be sorry.”
• The grudging apology: “I said I was sorry. What else do you want?”
• The expedient apology: “I know I’m in the doghouse unless I say I’m sorry, so here it is.”
• The “yes…but,” blame-deflecting apology: “I’m sorry I did X but you’re no Mother Theresa either.”
• The “Oh, what the hell.” apology: “Hey, I’m sorry, pal.”
• The obsequious apology: “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry (but don’t ask me why).”
• The contemptuous apology: “I’m sorry for stepping on your big fat ego.”
• The shameful apology: “I hate myself for what I did. Can you ever, ever forgive me?”
• The guilt inducing apology: “Do you really need me to apologize for that?”

 
HOW TO REPAIR
Be specific about what you are apologizing for.
Acknowledge that what you did hurt your partner.
Apologize unreservedly and quickly.  The longer you wait, the deeper the hurt will be.
Your partner needs to know that you understand how they feel and that you are sorry for making them feel that way.  
An apology has to reflect your true concern for the other person and sorrow and remorse for your actions.
Look your partner in the eye.  Take an open stance.  Speak calmly.  Listen.  Take your time.
Put yourself in your partner’s position.  How did your actions make them feel?   Empathize.  Let them know you understand.
Stay focused on feelings of your partner without overshadowing them with your own pain and remorse.
Understand that your apology may not be accepted.
Do not ask for forgiveness.  They may not be ready.  The best chance you have to be forgiven is to apologize well.
It takes strength of character to own your actions and the consequences of them, both for others and yourself.
 
Seek to understand your behavior and reveal the truth about yourself to the person you harmed.

• When they ask you, “Why did you do it? Why did you hurt me?” and you respond, “I don’t know,” they're likely to go ballistic. If you haven’t a clue, why should they expect you wouldn’t hurt them again? Why should they feel safe with you? Why should they forgive you? There’s not much you can do to take back what you did to hurt someone so deeply. You can’t redo it. But in addition to deep repair, you can spend time figuring out why you behaved the way you did to increase awareness and reassurance that it won’t happen again.

 
Explore the Sources of Your Behavior.

• What allowed me to violate their rights -- to devalue them and treat them without respect?
• What was I thinking? Was I thinking at all?
• How did I justify what I did? How did I give myself permission to act the way I did?
• What can I learn about myself from this? What was my behavior about? What am I about?

 
Why Is This Work Necessary?

• You may ask yourself, “why do I need to analyze my behavior and expose my dark inner core? Is it a disgrace to myself in order to make them feel better? To castigate myself for my crime?” It may help to reframe this task seeing it rather as a way of exploring the reasons behind the parts of you that were so hurtful and creating a landscape where forgiveness can take place. Your willingness to dissect yourself understand your issues is likely to help them trust you as someone who, of your own volition, wants to take control of your behavior. Without your willingness to take an interest in these issues, the hurt party has a little reason to trust you again and even less reason to forgive you.

 
Work hard to earn back trust.

• Your words convey your intent: your behavior demonstrates your capacity for change. To earn forgiveness, you need to back up your words of remorse with acts of repentance. Just as critical as “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again” are your bold, concrete gestures, day after day, which drive home the point that you mean what you say.

 
Engaging low cost and high cost trust building behaviors.

• In choosing appropriate acts of atonement, you have to give the hurt party what matters to them, what they need to trust you again. It’s better to air on the side of generosity. It will be important to have multiple conversations with your partner to understand exactly what you can do to win back your trust or by making suggestions and asking them to rate the importance to them.
• A low-cost, trust building behavior is something you can do regularly, with relative ease to demonstrate the sincerity of your penitence.
  • Changing your cell phone number so that your former lover doesn’t know how to reach you
  • Encouraging your partner to call you at any time.
  • Letting your partner know as soon as you run into or hear from the lover
  • Giving your partner a copy of your monthly telephone and credit card bills
  • Sending and reading email only in your partners presence
  • Telling your partner when you feel angry or annoyed at her rather than storing your feelings as you may have done in the past.
• A high cost behavior requires much more of you. It often involves a great sacrifice that makes you feel uncomfortable, defensive, or resistant.
  • Changing jobs if you and lover work in the same office
  • Changing homes or communities if you and the love are our neighbors. 
  • Formally ending your relationship with the lover in your partner’s presence
  • Putting a significant portion of your savings in your partners name.

 
Forgive yourself for injuring another person.
When you hurt someone, you debase yourself. When you work to earn that person’s forgiveness, you not only honor her, you bring honor to yourself.
 
What Do You Need to Forgive Yourself For?

• See if any of these apply or create your own.

• You overreacted to someone and responded in hurtful or vindictive ways.
• You treated someone unjustly because you were treated unjustly. You subjected her to the same abuse she experienced as a child. 
• You humiliated another person to prop up your own shaky self-esteem.
• You treated someone with contempt for not living up to impossible standards.
• You acted poorly towards someone because you couldn’t face your own guilt and complicity.
• You failed to get your addiction under control, then compromised the safety and well-being of those around you.
• You deliberately broke promises and broke the law.

 
What Does It Take to Forgive Yourself?

• Is self-forgiveness a free, unconditional gift yourself, or is it a prize you need to work hard to earn? Is it a healing balm for your guilt that inspires you to do better, or is it a convenient anesthetic the dolls your awareness of the pain you caused and lessons your responsibility for it? How much is a process goes on in your own head, and how much goes on in interaction with the person you hurt? Self-forgiveness canon must be earned, and as you perform meaningful acts of repair, you heal yourself. You can approach self-forgiveness in four ways.

 
You refuse to forgive yourself.

• Some of you won’t forgive yourselves for what you did, no matter how remorseful or repentance you are, no matter whether the person you hurt forgives you or not. This response is unhealthy, heightening your depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. When you relentlessly, and oppressively incriminate yourself, it blocks your ability to repair the damage done. Harriet Lerner (author of Why Won’t You Apologize) says, “how can we apologize for something we are, rather than something we did?”

 
You forgive yourself to easily (cheap self-forgiveness)

• You may have grown up believing that whenever you hurt someone, that person has a moral obligation to forgive you, and you, intern, have the right to forgive yourself and to treat yourself with the same compassion and generosity of spirit they extend to you. The emphasis is on making you, the offender, feel better rather than making you be better. 
• Forgiving yourself too quickly, without understanding your behavior or making amends directly to the person you injured, is a shallow and expedient way to release yourself from suffering. You may believe that self-forgiveness motivates you to confront and correct the wrong you did. But often the reverse is true. Cheap self-forgiveness may release you from the need to confront and relieve the suffering you caused.

 
You forgive yourself after taking responsibility for your actions, but without making amends to the person you harmed.

• When you follow this model, developed by forgiveness expert Robert Enright, you confront and criticize yourself for ruining another person, and replace "self-resentment" with "self compassion, generosity, and love" towards yourself. However, you feel no obligation to extend yourself to the hurt party or make reparations. This leaves out a critical element of self-forgiveness and makes it cheap.

You forgive yourself, but only after taking responsibility for your actions and making amends.

• When you apologize directly to the person you hurt, your self-forgiveness is likely to feel more deserved and therefore more genuine. You're also more likely to learn and grow from the experience, and reduce the change that you'll repeat the offense.

A Model for Earning Self-Forgiveness

Self-confrontation

• You confront the wrong you did and the harm you caused. You strip away all self-righteous rationalizations, all self-serving justifications and excuses, and try to pry open the truth. It may help to ask the injured person to fill in the blanks and tell you exactly how your behavior scarred her.

Self-appraisal

• You sharply criticize your words and actions, knowing that they violated another person and failed to represent you at your best. But you also put what you did in perspective, acknowledging that you're more than your transgressions, and identifying those aspects of yourself that you value. As you earn forgiveness, you remind yourself of your efforts to make amends are also part of who you are and what you're capable of.

Self-compassion

• You probe the reasons for your behavior, uncovering all the factors -- the stressors, personality traits, biological influences, formative life experiences -- that add up to the person you are today. This self-scrutiny is meant not to excuse what you did but to help you feel compassion for yourself and open the door to change.

Self-transformation

• You do what you can to make good -- directly to the person who you harmed, when possible. Your tasks include confronting her resistance to earning forgiveness; paying attention to the pain you caused; apologizing genuinely, non-defensively and responsibly; unveiling the truth of your behavior (what it says about you); and working hard to earn back trust.

Self-integration

• You accept that you could never make right what you did wrong, but you let your acts of repentance and repair transform the way you feel, know, and treat yourself. You continue to accept culpability for your mistakes, but you give up the need to continually punish and despise yourself there them. You strive to create a new life narrative that incorporates your transgression, but in a way that adds meaning and purpose to your life. As you release those you hurt from their pain, you release yourself from your pain.

WHAT THE HURT PARTY MUST DO TO GRANT FORGIVENESS
 
Three critical tasks for granting forgiveness.

1. Determine if you have mistaken assumptions about forgiveness and see how they stop you from granting it.
2. Complete steps of acceptance -- not alone, but with the offender’s help.
3. Create opportunities for the offender to make good and help you heal.

 
Determine if you have mistaken assumptions about forgiveness and see how they stop you from granting it.

• I can’t enter into the process of forgiving until I feel perfectly safe, comfortable, and ready.
  • No matter how penitent the offender is, you may never feel quite ready to forgive him. You might consider giving him a tentative greenlight to prove himself. This means letting him know that if he works to make amends, you’ll work to open yourself up to him and not play out your doubts and anxieties with each interaction.
• Forgiveness is a unilateral pardon; I shouldn’t ask for anything in return.
  • This is a position that if you are morally and psychologically developed human being, you forgive unconditionally. But why look only to the injured party to forgive an unrepentant offender? Why not urge them to relieve the suffering they caused and help them help you to forgive? A pardon is a gift that asks nothing of the offender. Forgiveness comes with a price and must be earned.
• Forgiveness happens immediately.
  • At what point does forgiveness really take place? For most of us, it’s a gradual process that unfolds in stages as the offender apologizes and delivers on their promise never to harm you again. It may take time for your motions to catch up to your decision to forgive, and for you to believe that their efforts are trustworthy.
• Forgiveness is perfect and complete.
  • You may also refuse to forgive if you assume that forgiveness must be 100%. Such thinking doesn’t allow for a response that’s in between which is where most of us reside. Who is to say how much forgiveness is sufficient? Whatever the percentage, you may want to consider allowing for partial forgiveness for forgiving enough.
• When I forgive, I relinquish all negative feelings toward the offender.
  • It is commonly assumed that when you forgive, your negative feelings are completely replaced by positive ones. This puts forgiveness out of reach and leaves you with no alternative but to not forgive it all. What happens when you genuinely forgive is not the necessarily empty yourself of all hostile feelings, but that you allow other emotions to all exist with them – more tender or positive emotions, such as sadness and grief. Along with your anger comes a richer, more balanced, more complex reaction -- encompassing both what the offender did wrong and what they did right, both the damage inflicted on you and their efforts to make good.
• When I forgive, I admit that my anger toward the offender was exaggerator unjustified.
  • When you forgive you don’t say that what the offender did wasn’t that bad. You stand by your recognition that the offender crossed the line. And they stand with you, convincing you that they know what they did was “that bad.” Unless they consciously acknowledge their violation, they have no claim to your forgiveness. And unless you consciously knowledge it, there’s nothing for you to forgive. You don’t give up your position of power; you give up your preoccupation with power. 
• When I forgive, I empower the offender and make myself weak and vulnerable.
  • Genuine forgiveness takes strength and resolve. Standing up for yourself, you insist that you’ve been wronged and require an accounting for the wrongdoing. You don’t dismiss your need for restitution; you let them work with you to achieve restitution.
• Forgiveness means reconciliation
  • If you like forgiveness with reconciliation, you may be reluctant to offer either but these are separate processes and should be considered separately. When you choose to forgive but not reconcile, you allow the offender to make amends for past wrongdoing but refuse to give them another chance to hurt you. After a significant violation you may want to end the relationship before you consider any type of reconciliation. In reality, however, forgiveness and reconciliation often lead to each other. If the offender is emotionally and physically available to you – if they listen empathically to your pain and work hard to correct their behavior – you may be more willing to welcome him back into your life. These warmer feelings may evolve, but only overtime as he demonstrates his trustworthiness.

 
Complete the following steps of acceptance – not alone but with the offender’s help.
 
The offender helps you honor the full sweep of your emotions.

• You don’t need them to acknowledge your feelings in order to make them legitimate. But when they do acknowledge them, they help you restore the center of gravity which is a necessary step toward healing. The offender can help your way through the chaos, overcome the sense of powerlessness and meaninglessness created by the violation, and give birth to a new narrative in which you feel more grounded, more in control, more whole. Together, you take a stand “against the erasure of your experience.” No longer do you need to cut yourself off from the feelings, or be flooded by them. No longer do they represent a destructive force that alienate you from yourself and from him. They become, instead, an invaluable source of enlightenment and reconnection. As they bear witness to your trauma, trying on your suffering, they help you integrate all that you feel, including, perhaps, some new, warmer feelings toward them.

The offender helps you give up your need for revenge but continues to seek a just resolution.

• When they listen compassionately to your distress and take responsibility for violating you, it helps restore your sense of dignity and justice. This may also reduce your need to punish and humiliate them, and make it easier for you to forgive them. The need for revenge is a part of you that is trying to reclaim power, to shed the role of victim and substitute action for helplessness. You may have less need for retribution if the offender steps forward and accounts for their wrong.

The offender helps you stop obsessing about the injury and re-engage with life.

• When the offender reacts to your pain with patience and compassion, not with judgment or disdain, they help you feel more normal, less shattered and alone. As they listen empathically, with no personal agenda, and accept that your recovery won’t necessarily follow a straight upward line, they send a signal that they want to be there for you in your suffering, however long it takes. Their willingness to take up your protest may release you from your obsessions and open your mind to forgiveness.

The offender helps you protect yourself from further abuse.

• Until the abusive behavior stops you will take precautions to ensure your safety. But when the offender fully understands how they have hurt you, commits to ending the behavior and provides evidence that they mean what they say, trust will begin to be rebuilt.

The offender helps you frame the offender's behavior in terms of their own personal struggles.

• When someone violates you, you may feel permanently altered, not at all the person you were before. You may have absorbed a sense of inner badness and feel flushed with shame. As the offender reverses this process, acknowledging that their behavior is a reflection on them, not you, he helps you reinhabit your valued self. With their support, you overcome your estrangement from your “good self”— and perhaps from their “good self.” When you stop seeing the offender solely in terms of your own injury and develop insights into them, you get to the heart of their motivation. When they point the way, you’ll find it easier to feel compassion for them, and for yourself.

The offender helps you reconcile with him.

• When you genuinely forgive the offender, you let their acts of restitution strengthen your attachment to them. Mercy and humility may feed your desire to stay connected, but the offender’s contrition seals the bond. You don’t let them back into your life until they earn their way back by proving they are trustworthy.

 
Create opportunities for the offender to make good and help you heal.

• In order to achieve genuine forgiveness, you need to create opportunities for the offender to hear your pain, care about your feelings, and compensate for the harm they did. If you treat them as evil incarnate and blast him with your silence or rage, you can be sure that nothing corrective will take place.
• There can be no genuine forgiveness either if, for the sake of an easy peace, you dismiss or deny your injury and treat them as though they had never hurt you. Ask nothing of them, or of yourself, and why should they feel any compulsion to make amends? They may not even know they hurt you. When nothing is faced or resolved, the best you can offer them is a cheap substitute for forgiveness.
• Genuine forgiveness requires reciprocity. You must decide whether to open the door and let them in; they must decide whether to cross the threshold and reach out to you. Each of you can take the first step.
• Here are several ways you can encourage the offender to reach out and earn your forgiveness.

 
Open yourself up and share your pain with them.

• You shouldn’t assume that they know you’re hurting, or that if they did know, they wouldn’t care. Tell them, and give them a chance to make amends. When you spell out your angst directly to them, and they listen attentively and in caring way, the two of you engage in an act of healing.

 
Speak from the soft underbelly of your pain.

• You may believe that unless you rage at the offender, they won’t understand the severity of their violation. You may also think that you need to explode in order to discharge toxic emotions from your system. This “cathartic model” is false and destructive. We now understand when we release rage – particularly when we do so repeatedly – we do not deplete our supply; we may, in fact, increase it. 
• If you share your hurt and not your anger you are more likely to evoke a less defensive, more supportive response. When you express only hard emotions in a raw, accusatory manner, you’re likely to crush your opponent but lose the game. The person who hurt you may get your point but want no part of you. You may succeed in making them feel rotten about themself, but you won’t get a shred of compassion in return. They are likely to respond by emotionally distancing himself, counterattacking, or feeling just plain paralyzed – all death knells to forgiveness.

 
Help him locate your pain, and tell him exactly what you need in order to heal.

• For the offender to earn your forgiveness, you may need to tell them precisely how you’re hurting and what you need in order to recover. When you help them locate your pain and tell them how to treat it, you create an opportunity for them to apply a specific salve to a specific one that is hurting and needs attention.
• When a hurt partner tells their spouse what they need to do to earn back trust, the spouse sometimes feels coerced, bristles, and says no. Other times, the spouse embraces the challenge. “I’d like to repair the damage I’ve done, but I honestly don’t know what to do or where to begin. Tell me. I want to know. I want to follow through.” 
• When you reveal what you need from the person who hurt you, you take a calculated risk. On one hand, you may learn that they don’t care about you or what you want. On the other hand, you may give them a long-awaited opportunity to reach out to you. When you tell someone what you need, you clear the way back to your heart. Don’t set up invisible hoops for the offender to jump through. Be concrete. 

 
Allow him to make reparations. 

• When a person injures you, they are in your debt. To pay it off, they need to make regular, reliable payments. When you refuse to let this happen, you put genuine forgiveness out of reach. Apologies are sometimes hard to except. When you allow the offender to apologize, you may be forced to cast them in a different light – to see them as a mixture of good and bad, as a fellow human being, vulnerable and worthy of forgiveness.

 
Let him know what he’s doing right

• The offender is unlikely to reach out to you if you fail to notice or approve their efforts. Encourage them whenever they:
  • Bears witness to your pain and listen with an open heart
  • Apologize generously, genuinely, and responsibly
  • Reflect on the origin and meaning of their behavior
  • Work to rebuild trust
• The offender’s greatest fear is that you’ll never forgive them – that no matter how hard they try to win back your affection and respect, you’ll always despise and punish them. It’s hard for them to keep producing positive, trust building behaviors when they believe you’ll make your time together a living hell. So don’t be afraid to affirm their efforts. You’re likely to be the beneficiary. If you’re not, you can always stop.

 
Apologize for your contribution to the injury.

• First of all, you have no role in the choices your partner made to betray you. That was the way they chose to manage their own needs, at your expense. However, when you both get past the initial shock of the discovery and examine the entire relationship you may gain some understanding that you played a role in some way to the dynamic that allowed for betrayal to happen. This may be hard to hear if you are still in the early stages of recovery. However, all couples who survive betrayal, end up re-creating a new relationship that is better than what they had previously. That requires making new agreements and creating a new vision of the relationship you want.
• If you are like most betrayed partners, you were very angry and reactive upon discovery of the betrayal. Anything you felt is perfectly normal and your reactions are understandable. However, they are also hurtful to your partner and do not encourage the very thing you may want – healing. So, after the initial shock calms a bit, consider reflecting how your reactions were hurtful and making repair.