How Can I Forgive You?: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To [9780063219069]

Overview

“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 with how to forgive someone: an unfaithful partner, an alcoholic parent, an ungrateful child, a terrorist. This award-winning book, recently updated with a new afterword by the author, provides a radical guide to healing from betrayal for hurt parties—without forgiving, as well as a way for offenders to earn genuine forgiveness.

In the complex psychology of forgiveness, 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 and rebuilding trust—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 is essential self-help for relationships, offering 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?