Whenever I mention the topic of forgiveness in a public meeting, I encounter a wide array of reasons given for not forgiving. One of those I encounter is “They aren’t sorry for what they did”.
In my mind, I call this the ‘sorry excuse’. On hearing it, I feel like I’m surrounded by nursery school children complaining how “He won’t say I’m sorry!” or “She has to say I’m sorry first!” followed by a crossing of their arms and turning their back toward me.
The ‘sorry excuse’ alerts me with a flashing warning signal, that there’s a lot of emotional immaturity going on in their marriage.
Not only is there immaturity going on, there’s also competition in the form of keeping score. Even though I want to tell them, in most cases, they aren’t in a place to hear it.
First, if they said “I’m sorry”, it’s a statement of regretting being caught rather than a statement of heart broken contrition. When you’re hurting, you are vulnerable to missing the signals alerting you to the difference between ‘being caught’ and sorrow over what they’ve done.
There’s a vast difference between being sorrowful for what they’ve done versus being sorry they got caught.
Second, the truth of the matter is that you don’t need them to say that they are sorry in order to forgive them. If you expect a statement of how sorry they are, you need some help differentiating between repentance and forgiveness.
Repentance requires a statement of being sorrowful at what they’ve done, while forgiveness doesn’t.
Another thing about repentance is that it comes AFTER forgiveness, not before it.
There’s been a lot of damage done in relationships from people confusing them. This is one of the reasons I address this topic in my video on forgiveness. When your relationship is at risk, it’s not the time for experimenting with what might work. You want something that’s been proven to work.
You can order the video, “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks” by clicking the link and filling out the order form. Within minutes, you can start the process of forgiveness in your life.
Best Regards,
Jeff
