Rage and the Stages of Forgiveness

     Yesterday I was explaining to someone the dilemma I face with dating. Because of past negative experiences with men, coupled with the expectations placed upon me as a woman, I remain vigilant of being trapped by in relationships. Probably the most damaging period of my life, reinforcing my current weariness, was during my second marriage to a man who became a clingy, depressing, paralyzing tie. His mucilaginous behavior became so abhorrent to me, it forced me to divorce him for my own sanity. He retaliated with a vigor. My divorce bankrupted me financially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually; he remarried within a month and prospered. Experiencing such life altering devastation, I made a vow to never to marry again. Though my position can be justified, seventeen years later I am confronted with how my inability to forgive myself, let alone my ex-husband, has only hurt me.

        Forgiveness is a loaded word bogged down by actions most of us deem unacceptable. We equate forgiveness with letting someone off the hook, releasing the perpetrator from culpability, forgetting the pain they inflicted, feeling the offender has not been punished as much as we have, and so on. If I forgive my ex-husband for the years of hell he put me through by financially bankrupting me, he gets off scot free. That does not seem fair. But this is not about forgiveness, it is about being stuck in rage.

       “Untransformed rage can become a constant mantra about how oppressed, hurt, and tortured we were.  …Rage corrodes our trust that anything good can occur. Something has happened to hope. And behind the loss of hope is usually anger; behind anger, pain; behind pain, usually torture of one sort or another, sometimes recent, but more often from long ago.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estes

         My rage at my second ex-husband, not only comes from the injurious conduct he inflicted upon me, but from my hasty decision to marry him because he appeared stable. This occurred during the terminal decline of my first ex-husband who was dying from alcoholism. In my desire to seek shelter from the emotional storm of my first husband’s self-destructive spiral, I chose my second husband, a man I thought could offer me a reliable, calm life. This backfired big time. After my first husband died, my second husband always felt he was in competition with my first dead ex-husband for my undying love. Weird, huh? It got even weirder. Before it was over, my social worker husband removed all the paper products in the house to make me suffer. Yes, he took out all the toilet paper, paper towels, envelopes, Q-tips, napkins, stationery, etc. This prompted my note to him on an old piece of mail, “Please have mercy upon me and do not abscond with my tampons.” My lesson in all of this was that I have never forgiven myself for making a bad rebound decision to marry this man. Additionally, I now keep all of my paper products under lock and key.   

        For the past seventeen years I have made countless decisions based on my inability to let go of all of this and forgive myself. These decisions include: to never marry again, to never really trust men, to be wary of any man’s intent with me, to distance myself from men, to be celibate, to fear losing control to men, and never allow myself to be vulnerable around men. It goes on and on. Now that I am facing approaching relationships with men, this is painfully coming to the surface. What was the cost of me not forgiving? Bitterness, resentment, grief, anger, a hardened heart, a cold shoulder, alienation, and an implicit set of entrenched and beliefs that has kept me stuck.

       What does Jungian therapist, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, recommend for handling rage:

·         Patience; recognize it; transform the fire into right action

·         Use anger as a creative force; bless it

·         Seek calm and the inner healer; contain it

·         Make a connection with a higher power

·         Forgiveness; release it

    

     How does one forgive? By the stages of forgiveness.

·         To forego-to leave it alone

·         To forebear-to abstain from punishing

·         To forget-to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell

·         To forgive-to abandon the debt.

    

      Easier said than done. The biggest impediment to letting go: “If I lose my rage, I will be changed; I will be weaker. (The first premise is correct, but the conclusion is inaccurate.)” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes