Unforgivable?

In conversation with my Brother this AM...I was thinking about the power to forgive. You cannot FORCE or FAKE TRUE FORGIVENESS...can you? I mean...to be real it has to be FELT. SAYING you have forgiven someone and still carrying the fact that you truly CANNOT forgive them in your heart...is being just as "fake" as the abusers...Isn't it? IMHO, THAT is why many survivors balk at being told that FORGIVING is a requirement of recovery! 

I do not believe that it is and many experts have said that MOST of us do, INDEED, have LIMITS to what we CAN forgive....THINGS that we consider to be simply UNFORGIVABLE! 

I recognize when I (personally) met the limit of my ability to FORGIVE the EK. I wanted to share that with you guys....

I did not fall over that "edge" based on the EK's abuse of my older children...although it was heinous. I think that is because I blamed myself for allowing it as I blamed the EK for DOING IT.

I did not fall over that edge based on his abuse of me...
I did not fall over that edge based on his cheating...
I did not fall over based on his desire to divorce me and walk away...
I did not fall over based on his discard of me...

INDEED...I did not even ask him NOT to divorce me, did not ask him to stay...did not even object. In TRUTH...my response to his statement that he wanted to divorce was, PRECISELY this..."If that's what you want."

THROUGH ALL THE HEINOUS acts that followed...I was STILL on THIS SIDE of that "edge". ANGRY for SURE...but NOT OVER THE EDGE.

As a matter of fact...even AFTER all that...when he refused to leave the house, refused to help pay any bills, lived off me DIRECTLY for over 3 months...terrorizing us all by SNEAKING into the house and just APPEARING there unexpectedly.... carrying his (ever present) loaded gun, eating the FOOD THAT I BOUGHT and sleeping in MY BED while I camped out on the couch...getting dressed for DATES in my bedroom...

I REMAINED perched on that edge.

Bought steaks one night and even bought the EK one!

Even through his vandalism of our cable, well pump and pool...that he was NOT responsible to help to pay repairs on (Thanks to my stupid lawyer)...still was not driven OVER!

THAT POINT...

MY LIMITATION...

was when he tore off that LAST REMAINING scrap of mask and turned on OUR CHILDREN. 

At THAT PRECISE POINT IN TIME...he became subhuman in my eyes. 

I could imagine nothing lower.

THAT, to ME, was (and remains) UNFORGIVABLE and I do not believe that will ever change.

There will be no "polite interaction".

There will be no "amicable communication"

There will be no joint interaction with our adult children...not EVER.

I will tolerate interaction of any kind for ONLY AS LONG as I must...until our children's 18th birthday.

At that point...THEY will determine what he knows of their lives.


He will get no information about them from ME (unlike the way I would alert my first ex husband of issues with OUR adult sons)

The very last HOPE of any VESTIGE of humanity I might have tried to see in him...DIED THAT DAY.

The man I THOUGHT I was married to was DEAD in my eyes...and not worth a single moment of the rest of my life...

ACCEPT, of COURSE...the time I spend telling the truth about what he is and helping others see that they are not alone! THAT TIME I am QUITE WILLING to SPEND!