Why the Unfaithful Spouse Must Forgive Themselves

[Music] today is part two surrounding the discussion of the unfaithful choosing to forgive themselves and how it can actually set them free and how it can actually help bring healing to your entire process of restoration and healing if the unfaithful spouse can't forgive themselves they're going to remain stuck if you haven't watched or listened to part one I hope that you will actually go and listen to it if you haven't I would actually suggest that you listen to part one first because part two will make far more sense and I don't think you'll be maybe even as angry with me after this if you've watched part one because I don't want you as a betrayed spouse to think that the unfaithful or getting off easy or that there's some hidden message of oh gosh so Samuel is just saying that if they just forgive themselves then everybody else should too and we'll live happily ever after go watch part 1 I think it'll bring incredible clarity and even sobriety to the message of why the unfaithful has to forgive themselves last time we talked about what forgiveness for ourselves does not mean today we're gonna talk about what it does mean you see when we as an unfaithful have forgiven ourselves it means that number one we've accepted what we've done we're no longer living in denial about what our choices have done to our spouse what our choices have done to our family what our choices have done to all of those people around us when we have forgiven ourselves it means that we're no longer in this atrocious denial about how significant the impact of our affair or affairs or addiction was on our spouse we've accepted our choices we've accepted that we have actually done what we've done and we can't outrun it we can't hide from it we can't deny it we can't minimize it we can't justify it we've stopped all that and we've accepted the fact that this was our choice and we are sitting with it and though we hate it we've accept we've come to terms with what we've done we've come to terms with how our choices have radically altered our own life and our spouses or partners life we've come to accept that what we've done cannot be forgotten cannot be wiped away but we will choose to live with the consequences of our actions because we've accepted that what we have done is ours to own a definition that many people use for forgiveness is giving up all hope of having a better past and I think for this discussion today and last time when we have forgiven ourselves we've given up all hope of having a better past and so when we can finally accept what we've done and we choose to forgive ourselves we no longer hold it against ourselves meaning we no longer continue to throw it in our own face you're a wicked sinner you're a terrible human being you'll never be any better oh you're just horrible horrible horrible you deserve death you deserve hell bla bla bla we come to a point where we say what I did was horrible I'll never justify it I'll never minimize it enough I'll never be able to make it go away but I can move forward I'm not going to live under the shadow of self-hatred my whole life it doesn't mean that I won't have compassion and empathy towards my victim it doesn't mean that all is forgiven and everything's great it just means I'm no longer going to just hate myself because hating myself doesn't help me living in shame and hopelessness and despair doesn't help me but living in this ridiculous sense of I've forgiven myself so everybody is great and you just need to love me and you need to get over it and you need to be just as happy as I am no not true that's why this discussion of forgiving ourselves often times needs to be processed with other third party people who are not your spouse your spouse is not going to just be like oh my gosh you've forgiven yourself that's amazing what a great day it's going to be no I learned how to forgive myself with my mentor but with a group of other men that I was working with behind the scenes and when I was processing through being able to forgive myself yes I felt great joy in in a sense of freedom and I felt like this a million pound weight was lifted off my heart and my shoulders but I knew that Samantha wasn't going to get that I knew that Samantha was going to experience the payout or the fruit of my choice to forgive myself I didn't come home and be like you need to hear this woman you need to know that there's a new sheriff in town and it's called self-esteem no no no I remember one of the first times that I ever experienced a freedom towards myself as I was on the phone with my mentor and he was explaining this to me and I thought man and in this situation he prayed for me and then I I kind of said a prayer of my own kind of forgiveness I know that some of you don't come from faith and you don't have to come from faith to make a declaration to yourself or to meditate or self talk you can forgive yourself and we'll talk more about that later but I remember I felt that moment and over the next day or two I Samantha said something to me one day she said you know you seem really at peace what's going on like you seem like something's happened what you know what's going on and I said to her you know I had a great moment with my mentor the other night and I realized that I can't keep living hating myself because that actually makes me harsh and kind unkind to you and so I'm learning how to forgive myself but as I'm forgiving myself I'm understanding that there's a war that you're wrestling with on whether or not to forgive me or how to forgive me and you have your own battle and it helps me be compassionate to you because I'm sensing what it's like to forgive myself and what a horrible human being I feel that I have been and so I get more of your journey and there was kind of this moment she was like okay well I hope you don't think that you know we're just gonna snap our fingers and everything's gonna be great and I said no absolutely not but you know there's three recoveries right there's yours and what you're working through and then there's mine and I'm working through this stuff and then there's the potential you know marriage recovery but I know that if I don't work this stuff out and I threw in a couple things like this I know that if Richard doesn't kick my butt I know that if Rick doesn't take me to the woodshed I'm not going to get this clarity because I wanted to kind of help her see that this wasn't just rainbows and unicorns for her unfaithful spouse but it was starting to help me find freedom which then helped me show compassion and helped me show patience and helped me be more at peace when she was having difficult moments you see as I began to extend mercy to myself I would then be in a place where Samantha would maybe get angry or even sometimes kind of lash out or ask me some very pointed questions and it felt like I was being drug through the coals again and reminded of my past choices I wasn't getting defensive I was simply saying yeah it was terrible and I did do this and I hate it and I never want to do those things again but I'm here and I'll answer any question that you want answered and I understand that this is outrageously hard but I love you and I know that that's kind of I don't know that you want to hear that but I'll do whatever it takes and there was just a a new wave of peace that would come over me because I wasn't still welling up inside of anger and self-hatred at myself I was finding a sense of peace and acceptance at what I had done which was able to sometimes be misunderstood by Samantha because she was kind of like look you're not getting upset so do you not care and I would say I do care but I'm I'm I'm feeling this great sense of kind of grief for what I've done to you and I don't want to try and my back there's nothing for me to fight back about I just want you to feel safe you see when we have forgiven ourselves and when we've extended mercy to ourselves there's a freedom that comes that allows us to no longer make everything about ourselves and make it about them you see when I got this when this point hit me and when I really was able to work through some deep-seated forgiveness towards myself I was then able to stop making everything about me and make it about her to the point where Samantha sometimes would be like look you keep trying to you know make my life healthy and make me feel safe and all that stuff what are you doing for you what do you why is everything about me what are you doing and at that point I was able to very calmly say well honey I've been doing this and this and I can show you my journal and then one time she did that with Rick and Rick was able to say well Samantha he has been doing these things I feel very safe and she had several moments where she would say and it looked just like this she would go OK and she'd kind of go and then sometimes she'd write something in her journal but she would go OK because it made sense to her and it was new and it was so different than before when I was a constant state of warfare because I was at war with myself and hadn't forgiven myself so I was lashing out at her because the war was inside me next when you forgiven yourself there is an awareness that you know what you're capable of you know and I still to this day know what I am capable of I know who I am capable of becoming I know deep down inside lurking is a monster that if I feed that monster I know where I eventually will end up and so I have to choose not to feed that monster I don't live with this oh look I've forgiven myself all you people need to just get over it I'm great you're not no no no see it's the opposite it's very counterintuitive I have had labor to forgive myself and I know what I am Kate I know how I can be angry and irritable and moody and my mood swings and I know that I could be incredibly selfish and self-absorbed and so as I've extended compassion to myself it's actually worked very differently and I have been able to understand look honey any given day just the other day in fact Samantha and I had this little tiff about some parenting issues and I just remember going man I just I know what it's like to live with me and I and I just said hey senator tax I said hey I'm sorry I didn't mean any disrespect towards you or your job or your time I was just in a rush and lost track of time and so I'm sorry and you she was like ah and I'll protect the rest but when you forgiving yourself you understand what you've had to forgive and so you know what's lurking inside of you and so there is a compassion and an empathy to others for what you can put them through if you're not on your game or if you're not walking in a sense of humility and empathy and compassion so I'm sure the question is will can an unfaithful spouse forgive themselves too soon absolutely and that's why I think to the degree of the struggle that it is to forgive themselves is directly proportionate to the compassion the empathy the humility the patience the peace that you will see if someone just out of just haphazardly says well I'm just gonna forgive myself and move on down the road there typically will not be empathy or remorse there will not be a long term remorse there will not be a genuine empathy and patience and a willingness to suffer there will not be those things because they did choose to forgive themselves too soon because they didn't work through the pain and the anger and the hurt of what they've caused other people as well as what they've caused to themselves you see when we rush our own forgiveness we short-circuit grieving for what our choices have done to cells we short-circuit understanding and wrapping our mind around the pain that we have caused others as well as ourselves you see I think in many ways when we really come face to face to the enormity of what we've done to other people there should be a process to that call it coming up for air self-awareness healing there should be a process to it it isn't gonna be overnight it isn't gonna be a quick fix it isn't gonna be a week or two weeks I'm gonna tell you it's probably going to be several months and it comes in layers you're gonna forgive yourself for what you're kind of in touch with and then maybe a few more months a few more rigorous attempts at recovery work in healing and self-confrontation and then you'll forgive yourself a little bit more and you'll get deeper and deeper into your heart into your repair work into what's going on inside of you but it's gonna take time if you're a betrayed and you guys are down the road a little bit I wonder if a missing ingredient isn't them forgiving themselves I wonder if maybe they're at war with themselves and they're taking it out on you I wonder if the defensive miss and the animosity and the anger and the inability to make it about you is may be rooted in shame and self-hatred maybe it's rooted in the fact that they need to do some pretty hardcore work at forgiving themselves this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card this is not a hey you should go easy on the unfaithful they're at war with themselves not at all my friends and I hope that that has come through I hope if you're an unfaithful you'll begin to work through this and ask yourself man have i forgiven myself and for those of you that would kind of resort to they should never forgive themselves they should live in this prison that they have built for themselves the rest of their life well they're only going to continue to do more damage then they're going to give up all hope that they can ever have a future and then they will remain chained to their behavior they'll begin to give up and quit and say why should I even try I'm not capable of doing any better so why should I try and resist temptation I'm just gonna keep acting out acting out acting out it doesn't work that way it's when we forgive ourselves that we will see change internally and I hope that you can forgive yourself I hope that you will take this journey not of going easy on yourself but actually confronting yourself identifying maybe what you're angry at yourself for getting into the minutiae and then extending mercy and extending forgiveness to yourself for your choices [Music] you

Channel: Affair Recovery

Views: 18,381

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

Keywords: infidelity, overcoming infidelity, infidelity scars, samuel, surviving infidelity, beyond affairs, betrayal, beyond betrayal, angry cheater, anger, anger management, strong emotions

Id: mkRdVrhA_6s

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019