How Can I Forgive You?

“If you are struggling with issues of betrayal—or the challenge of whether and how to forgive—here is the most helpful and surprising book you will ever find on the subject.”—Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., author of The Dance of Anger

Everyone is struggling to forgive someone: an unfaithful partner, an alcoholic parent, an ungrateful child, a terrorist. This award-winning book provides a radical way for hurt parties to heal themselves—without forgiving, as well as a way for offenders to earn genuine forgiveness.

Until now, we’ve been taught that forgiveness is good for us and that good people forgive. Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring, a gifted clinical psychologist and award-winning author of After the Affair, proposes a radical, life-affirming alternative that lets us overcome the corrosive effects of hate and get on with our lives—without forgiving. She also offers a powerful and unconventional model for earning genuine forgiveness—one that asks as much of the offender as it does of the hurt party.

Beautifully written and filled with insight, practical advice, and poignant case studies, this bold and healing book offers step-by-step, concrete instructions that help us make peace with others and ourselves, while answering such crucial questions as these:

• How do I forgive someone who is unremorseful or dead?
• When is forgiveness cheap?
• Can I heal myself – without forgiving?
• How can the offender earn forgiveness?
• What makes for a good apology?
• How do we forgive ourselves for hurting another human being?

From bestselling author Janis Spring comes a long–awaited second book which tackles the sensitive issue of forgiveness with anecdotes and clinical case material. The topic of forgiveness is fast becoming one of the key concepts in psychotherapy. Until now, explains Spring, we have bought into the myth that forgiving is not only good for you but is the only morally sound response to violation. We believe that there are only two choices, to forgive or not, and that forgiveness is an unconditional gift that does not have to be earned by the offender. In How Can I Forgive You?, Spring debunks these myths and offers a new way to think about this critical dynamic––illuminating a middle ground between total forgiveness and not forgiving, an approach that enables the hurt party to maintain self–respect and get on with their lives...

After years of observing people first hand in her clinical practice and witnessing their struggle to forgive and be forgiven, Spring has developed a model to help real people heal from real interpersonal injuries. She provides concrete, detailed, step–by stop instructions for both the hurt party and the offender. Spring explains that there are many options. You can refuse to forgive, which is empowering but leaves you stewing. You can offer cheap forgiveness, which happens when you ignore your pain and will do anything to preserve the relationship. Or you can take the healthier paths of acceptance and genuine forgiveness. In Acceptance, you cut your own path and walk alone. In Genuine Forgiveness, the offender clears a path and walks beside you.The clinical examples run from the petty to the serious to the profane – from a friend who forgets your birthday to a brother who refuses to help you take care of an elderly parent to a deliberate act of sexual abuse.

We are all struggling to forgive someone, and hate feeling ruptured in our significant relationships and fractured within ourselves. We are all searching for some new position that frees us from the corrosive effects of hate, gives voice to the injustice, and helps us to make peace with the person who hurt us and with ourselves. This book delivers some real answers to this critical interpersonal dilemma.