Relationships/Self/LGBTQ

3 Steps to Forgiveness

You can learn to forgive your betrayer and it will set you free

I should be an expert on betrayal. I’ve been both the betrayed and the betrayer.

We have no control over how others hurt us. The ones we love — parents, lovers, and children — inflict the worst suffering.

A betrayal of trust by someone you love inflicts excruciating pain on us. It disrupts our inner world, and it bleeds into our outer world as well. It’s difficult to concentrate on anything other than our pain.

We do have control over how we hurt others. Unfortunately, we don’t always exercise that control. But we do have the power to apologize to those we hurt and to forgive those who have hurt us. Moving beyond the pain of betrayal comes from knowing how to apologize and how to forgive.

After I had an affair with a man and came out to my wife, Lynn, I set off an emotional tsunami for her. She hoped to calm the storm by remaining married. But I knew — and she later recognized — love isn’t loving if it’s forced.

We agreed to end a marriage that could not have worked for either of us. But I had been thinking about my future long before she was forced to consider hers.