Do They Have To Forgive You?

Even if you apologize perfectly and completely reform your ways, your partner might be so stuck in being a victim that he won’t see that you’ve changed. Or, he might see it and won’t want to be with you anyway. If that’s the case, why should you bother to make amends?

You’re not doing this for him; you’re doing it for you. You’re doing it because you’re caught in a Chasm of Culpability and need to get out. You’re doing it, so you won’t have to be here again.

Whether or not she forgives you, may not even be about you. Let’s use a banking metaphor. Two people go to the bank. One has a good credit score, the other a bad one. One is clearly more creditworthy, or trustworthy, than the other, based on past behavior. One paid his loans on time, the other sometimes defaulted. These two see the same banker and ask her for a loan.

You may think you know the sensible thing for the banker to do. She’s supposed to give the loan to the one with a good credit score and turn down the other with a bad credit score. But, she doesn’t have to do that; she can do what she wants. For instance, she could say the person with a good credit score can get a loan anywhere, so he doesn’t need to get it from her. She could decide to give the one with a bad credit score a break. Having a good credit score does not dictate the banker’s decision. She makes her own decision.

Say someone got caught up with cocaine and her partner is trying to decide whether to trust her again. She makes a complete turnaround. She goes to rehab, gets off the blow, and pisses clean for the next twelve months. She’s made a complete moral inventory and admitted her shortcomings. Everyone else has forgiven her. They applaud her at her NA meeting. She’s a changed person. Anyone would say that her credit score had been bad, but it’s improving. Objectively, she may be more trustworthy now than a person who never used cocaine at all and never had to deal with the dark side of themselves. That doesn’t mean the partner has to trust her. Trusting is up to her.

Or, alternatively, say someone is still stuck in the same old behavior he was in before: fighting, cussing, carrying on. His partner never knows when he’s coming home at night; she doesn’t know whether he’s coming home at all. He could be with anybody, doing anything. He could be in jail, in the hospital, or in bed with another woman. He could just be shooting pool with his buddies, blowing off her texts. The man, by any measure, is completely untrustworthy. Everyone says the partner should dump the loser. His credit score is zero. You know what? It’s still up to the partner whether to trust him. She can do what she wants. It doesn’t have to make sense.

What would cause a banker to ignore a low credit score and lend money anyway? She could be just a rank fool. She could be trying to lose her job. She could believe it’s her job to save the most wretched. She could be a loan shark, offering a payday loan of trust and good will that will ruin the creditor in the end. Maybe trust is burning a hole in her pocket and she can’t get rid of it fast enough. She could be a banker with so much money in her vault, so much good will, brimming with so much self-esteem, that she can take risks that others cannot.

What would cause a banker to ignore a good credit score and refuse the loan? Maybe she, too, is a rank fool. Maybe she’s uncomfortable with success. Maybe she finds suspicion more compelling than grace. Maybe it’s too boring, too safe to give trust to someone who deserves it. Maybe she’s just a miser with her trust. There could be so little money in her vault, so little good will, so little self-esteem, that she’s not willing to risk a dime.

The point is, it’s up to the banker. If that banker is your loved one; if you did something to hurt him and have done everything you can do to regain trust; it’s still up to him. You can’t force him to trust you. If you’re the banker, it’s up to you.

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Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice and the author of The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad, from which this article is adapted.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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