Cruelty

"Acts of unrepentant cruelty by the living or the dead are the hardest things to forgive because they provoke the deepest forces of hatred, and self-hatred (the worse you have been treated by someone you love, the more you hate yourself for having loved that person).

Excerpt  From “Forgiving and Not Forgiving" by Jeanne Safer, PhD

Cogent Review

"At a time when clergy, therapists, and the lay community are urging forgiveness as an all-purpose cure for every troubled relationship, Safer counsels caution. Not forgiving can be as moral and healing in some situations as forgiving can be in others, she says.

Safer is certainly not against genuine forgiveness, nor does she approve of vengefulness. Her concern is that people are rushed into a dishonest façade of forgiveness when they do not truly feel it. True forgiveness, she believes, takes time and is only partially under your conscious control. She also believes that not forgiving, when an action genuinely offends your moral sense, and the perpetrator has shown no remorse nor made any effort to change, is a an honest and moral choice.

What is most important to Safer, and she illustrates it with many examples, is a serious attempt to engage with your feelings about the relationship in question and to admit the ways in which you may have contributed to it. Only such honesty can lead to a healthy outcome, but what a healthy outcome is differs for each person and situation. She also stresses that forgiveness and non-forgiveness are not opposites; they are points along a continuum, and there are many points in between. Each individual must decide what is right for him or her"