Forgiving Profound Betrayal

Something I have heard in therapy, and you probably have heard everywhere also, is the idea that "forgiveness is for yourself."

By that logic, if someone profoundly betrays you, then you have some guilt or baggage from their action? That is logically incoherent.

No, when someone reaches their hands around your lungs and squeezes them until they burst, painting your rib cage with pink bits, you did nothing wrong.

They left a void in you to rid themselves of their own void. They filled themselves by emptying you.

Addition through your subtraction.

In those moments, it really does feel that humans are infinitely far from God.

In such cases, there never is a 'going back' or some redemption, even if you make the choice to forgive them (to whatever extent may be possible…).

When someone harms you to the point of suffocating your spirit, you never forget their capability for harm. Consider the mask removed… In the sense that everyone is capable of great harm, and this person revealed to you the threshold of how willing they are to harm you.

There really is no human relationship safe from this. Those who believe otherwise really do live in a fantasy world. Even Weil herself spoke of the desire to inflict pain on another to mimic the ache of her migraines.

The problem with choosing to forgive such betrayal is that it requires both moral and individual calculus… And those things are scarcely ever indicators of alignment with the Greater. 'Well, she did X bad thing to me, but she has consistently done Y so she must be fundamentally good and love me!"

If your love includes atrocity, you can keep your love.