We humans are often blaming the wrong person and instead of healing they split up.
For example: She does something wrong to him. He hurts deeply, but tries to be brave. She eventually apologizes and then expects he accept her apology (since he claims that he loves her), so he does because he loves her.
But then a week later they argue and he brings up what she did wrong to him and she clams that he is childish and bad because he won’t let it go.
Over the next 3 months they argue, his hurt arises from time to time and he mentions what she did and finally they split up.
She tells her friends that he is childish, her therapist claims that he should forgive and forget.
Neither she or her therapist understand the hidden hell he is suffering within, even he doesn’t understand it – he wants it to go away and that they be as they once were before she hurt him. Deep within he wonders if she will hurt him again as well.
The issue is not that she apologized and that he is a bad guy. He is still the good guy he always was, he is just reacting to the pain and anguish that she put him through.
In some cases she blames him for being childish and not letting it go and he feels guilt and self hate for not letting it go, he does not understand that he has not healed, she does not understand that he has not healed – and the reason why she loses her cool when he brings it up is because she still feels very guilty (possibly ashamed) for what she did to him. He is trying to hide away his unhealed-pain and she is trying to hide her unhealed-guilt.
Even after apologizing and accepting the apology both are still suffering deep within from neither healing from what happened.
He is wondering all through this, “Am I being childish, I don’t feel childish, I feel angry because I am hurt.” He wants to let it go, but just can’t seem to do so.
When they argued after the event of her hurting him the words just come out of his mouth because the feeling of deep hurt is still within him hurting him over and over again and he tries to push it down demanding of himself that he just grow up (torturing himself for not letting it go). But before he knows it, if they argue, he brings it up all over again and her defensive-guilt arises all over again and a nasty argument is the result, they both tend to see the other as the enemy. When in reality their hurt within is eating away at them.
Its the fact that he has not healed yet that brings it up, its not history yet, it is still suffering to him, so he keeps reacting to it. This is not being childish, this is a wound.
[If they split up this event is now baggage, and both not being healed means that both will bring this baggage to their next relationship hurting their new partners, possibly even more so]
While her guilt drives her crazy, and she can’t understand why it won’t go away, she notes that when she is away from him she does not feel so guilty, so she starts to like the idea of not being around him anymore. He feels better when she is not around because seeing her reminds him of what she did to him.
Her apology is just words, his acceptance of her apology is just words, none of it stops her guilt and none of it stops his pain and anguish for what she did and he is not healed, he is still suffering every day and her guilt is eating away at her. (If she feels guilt, she is suffering everyday alongside him.)
Because each of them is suffering their own personal guilt they cannot see how the other can help them.
You see words don’t heal, genuine love, genuine tears, and maturity heals.
What she could have done is seen the hell that she put him through, cast her pride aside, got on her knee’s with him and really made him realise that what she did to him is tearing her up inside to see him like this and to know that he now has a hell within him that was not there “until she put it there”. People today are not very responsible, we tend to avoid admitting what we did or we say words and expect what we did to others to just go away and that simply does not work.
She, the guilty one, must take him through the healing journey as someone who truly regrets the hell that she put him through, and he, so grateful heals with her crying at his side, both torn up from what happened, and if he did anything to push her to hurting him then he must acknowledge that and let her know his guilt.
In her effort, love for him, compassion, he now knows that she won’t do it again because she has proven to him how much he means to her and how far she will go to helping him, healing him and loving him.
By healing him she removes all her feelings of guilt, because she made them both better again and the love between them much more powerful and stronger.
This is why they say that love heals, because love does heal.
All the best from James Martin Sandbrook.
December, 2022.