I've never been entirely comfortable with the concept of forgiveness. Sure, if you're truly to get over being wronged or abused, you'll need to forgive the person responsible for hurting you. Yet to me there can be something uncomfortably condescending about forgiving another. It's almost as though you're saying, "I'm better than you, ‘cause I never would have done what you did to me . . . but because of my charitable ideals, I'm going to forgive you anyway." And it's this regrettable link between forgiveness and the presumption of superiority that makes me a little uneasy about the whole concept.
I can't help but wonder whether, if we were actually in the shoes of our "designated perpetrator," we might not have done the same pernicious thing done to us? What if we had the same parents they did? Or the same genetic makeup? Or if, in growing up, we "imbibed" the same messages about ourselves that our personal "wrongdoer" did--whether of inferiority, shame, or (indeed!) entitlement? Further, what if those messages left us with the same neediness, pent-up rage, or ruthless ambition that became their legacy? What if the negative beliefs about themselves and the world "inherited" from their environment were in fact part of our own endowment?
Ultimately, can we really be that confident that motivated from deep within to compensate for bad feelings about ourselves, or to "act out" positive (though unwarranted) notions about what is "due" us because our parents made us feel special, we ourselves could have refrained from doing to others the same unjust things done to us?
Let me offer an extensive example to illustrate the possibly "warrantless" grounds for forgiveness.
Say your father were a "functioning alcoholic"--meaning that though he managed to hold onto a job, his addiction compelled him to emotionally abandon you (and your sibs). Because he spent most of his non-working hours supporting his habit, he couldn't possibly have been there for you in the many ways you needed him to be.
Moreover, let's say your mother (as is typical in such cases) was his "enabler." Endeavoring to safeguard what she perceived as the family's welfare, her life pretty much revolved around your father's dysfunctional drinking. Desperately laboring to keep things from falling apart, she made excuses for him, denied the seriousness of his problem, and in various ways accommodated (or "succumbed") to his noxious life style. (And this despite the obviously abusive effects of his inebriated behaviors.)
Sadly--tragically--as a result of her misguided efforts, you felt abandoned by her as well, particularly since she did little to protect you or your sibs from your father's drunken rages. Given the role that her anxieties obliged her to play, she simply wasn't--couldn't--be there for you anywhere as much as you required her to be. Either she was busy frantically trying to keep your father from getting fired (e.g., lying to his employer about his being ill at times when he was simply too "hung over" to report for work), or she was nervously scheming to prevent his drinking from getting further out of control.
Additionally, if she felt obliged to defend your father whenever you said something bad about him, you may have ended up believing that you didn't have any right to have needs of your own--that such needs weren't worthy or valid, or that merely asserting them was selfish. Worst of all, your mother may have given you the message that your very value in the family hinged on your willingness to renounce your needs and desires for the good of others (thereby setting you up, as an adult, to follow in her own dysfunctionally self-sacrificing footsteps). And finally, if she took out some of her mounting frustrations about the whole situation on you personally--because, after all, you were the one raising the issue--you may well have ended up feeling guilty and ashamed.
In accounting for such an unwholesome family dynamic, I'd like, hypothetically, to trace it back to its possible origins, suggesting how each of these parents may actually have been "pre-determined" to enact such maladaptive, detrimental roles.
Most wives who are co-dependent with their spouse's chemical dependency are so because of their own unresolved issues from childhood. They may well have had an alcoholic father (or mother) whom they never felt adequately loved by. The "inner child" part of them--still yearning for the affection and devotion they could never experience earlier--may unconsciously be drawn to a man who drinks, but--during courtship, at least--really does seem to love them. And so committing themselves to such a man seems to offer a resolution to the child's enduring dilemma. The childish assumption here is, "If I just love him enough, show him he can depend on me, he won't need to drink anymore and I'll get the loving relationship [with my father] I never got when I was growing up." Or, it might be: "Unlike with my dad, I now have the power to keep a man from abandoning me . . . if only I can take good enough care of him."
What this woman cannot appreciate is that anyone who's become alcohol-dependent (or, for that matter, dependent on any experience to "lift" their mind or mood) will eventually separate from them emotionally, as they become increasingly "committed" to their addiction. To whatever degree, they're destined to abandon virtually everything outside of what they've come more and more exclusively to depend on. In consequence, partners of alcoholics almost invariably discover that their attempts to change their addicted spouse have been little more than exercises in futility.
Getting back to your alcoholic father, he may have grown up in a family where he was constantly being criticized, invalidated, disrespected, and physically abused. Feeling defective and inferior--and thus suffering from poor self-esteem--his childhood was one of frequent distress and a depression never that far from the surface. Perhaps as a teen he discovered that he could feel a lot better (or at least not as bad) when he illicitly drank with his buddies. So getting high became his favored way of alleviating (though hardly "resolving") ever-nagging self-doubts.
Researchers generally agree that at the root of almost all addictions are serious self-esteem deficiencies. And alcohol (like any other addictive substance) can never address, or rectify, such deficits. It can only cloud them over . . . for a time, at least. Which is why substance abusers must return again and again for their fix. And why abuse almost inevitably turns into dependency. Thus the more dependent the addict becomes, the less anything else matters--and that, of course, includes his (or her) entire family.
So although as a child you may have felt compelled to interpret your father's insufficient caring for you as signifying your own lack of worth (i.e., taken his disengagement from you personally), it should be obvious that, blinded by his own addictive needs, he could barely see you, let alone adequately attend to your basic dependency needs. He was, after all, much too busy attending to his own never-met-from-childhood dependency needs.
So--finally--how much can you really blame him for all of this? Sure, it's your prerogative if that's what you want to do. (And, to be sure, blaming others for our difficulties does tend to make us feel a little better about ourselves.) But if you're seriously interested in learning all you can about how you got psychologically wounded, you might want to look at why your father was actually driven to become an addict because of his own desperate need to feel better about himself. And at this level, can you really blame him? That is, don't we all strive to escape pain (physical or psychic) and move toward whatever offers us more pleasure, or at least takes the edge off our distress--or despair?
