Can a Woman Ever Forgive?

[Guest]

I dated my last girlfriend for 16 months while living abroad. We were hopelessly in love but I had real serious doubts about whether we would ever last since we both seemed to think that once we came back to the US, things would end. Without justifying things, I had a series of one night stands throughout the relationship and then, because of the guilt, confessed everything.

 

She initially seemed ok with things, even accepting a proposal of marriage knowing about what happened, but (after talking about things with her friends) cut me off. I sent her flowers for Valentines Day and she seemed really grateful. In fact, she promised the friend who delivered the flowers that she would email a short thank you note and waived hello to me when she saw me at work.

 

Today I saw her, and she turned her back on me. She told the mutual friend that she no longer wanted to talk about my relationship with her and that, although she was thankful for the flowers, she would not email or contact me. I don't understand the sudden change in attitude.

 

I have remained celibate for months, and will remain so, and live with a constant hollowness and loss because of my actions and because I truly thought she was my other half. I desparately want to prove to her that I was the person she thought and that I would never do anything like I did to her ever again. Is this foolish? Is it possible for a woman to get over something like this? Do I remain celibate for years in the hope that she might see past the cheating?

 

Or do I learn from my mistakes, and whenever I heal, not make them again with whomever I am with next?

 

Not one moment goes by that I do not miss her and do I not regret what I did.

[I Luv the Chariot OH]

Yes, women forgive. Just like men, surprisingly!

 

Frankly though, I think she'd be very stupid to forgive you.

[Butterflying]

Yes women forgive. Unfortunately, healing takes time. The dept of the pain determines the amount of time for healing. Sometimes, when a person heals, they decide not to ever risk getting hurt by that person again. They don't have second chances.

 

For your sake, I'm glad you realize your mistake. You should wait a while and see if she comes around. DON'T get involved with anyone else. You might want to give yourself a time limit of how long to wait. I'd say 4-6 months is usually appropriate. And then if things haven't changed, move on to someone else. Start anew and do things right this time.

[Guest]

Thank you both of the posts. I think you are right in that she would be stupid for forgiving me for the simple reason that she loved me so unconditionally and I betrayed that love and her trust so viciously. I can justify and explain what I did but it does not take back what happened.

 

So you both know, I have already given her about 4 months and remained absolutely faithful and celibate. I plan on remaining that way for a long time (at least another six months or more)--in part to show her that I can remain faithul--although I think she cannot forgive. Also, after everything that happened, I find myself incapable of being with anyone.

 

In a wierd way, I find it hard to trust people. Stated differently, when I confessed to her it was not an easy thing. I had never cheated on anyone before and I felt genuine shame for what I had done. After I confessed, we really both felt we could move on and repair things. It was after the confession that we got engaged.

 

But she returned abroad for three weeks without me and began to suspect (wrongly) that I had reverted back to my cheating ways while home. And then she began talking to friends and colleagues and telling them what I done. So when I returned to be with her, she changed her mind and dramatically cut things off.

 

I never thought that the act of coming clean could be used against me by someone I had loved.

 

Many of my male friends have told me that my mistake was not to cheat. Rather they said my mistake was tell her the truth. They said that, because the cheating had stopped (which it had) once we agreed to return to the US, I accomplished nothing by alleviating my guilt other than destroying both of our lives.

 

It just stinks. We see each other every day and no longer even aknowledge that we were ever a part of either of our lives.

 

I wonder if people realize that (from the cheater's perspective) the emotional damage which occurs. Cheating is cruel for two reasons. It damages the person whom you love and it truly ruins the cheater too.

 

Any advice on when I will stop beating myself up over what I did? When will the guilt and pain I feel ever go away?

[MelissaL]

Everybody's different in regards to forgiveness, their are different levels depending on who, what & how much time it will take. Will she ever forgive you? She may not even know, and there are probably outside forces swaying her opinion (parents, friends, etc.) Should she forgive you? I'd find it pretty hard, and even if I did I don't know that I'd be able to trust you again, which makes it impossible to have a healthy relationship again (although if you had one in the first place, you probably wouldn't have cheated in the first place).

 

You have basically 2 options: give her some time and some space. Stick it out and remain celibate while showing your remorse and devotion to her (in a non-creepy, stalkerish way), which may or may not ever work out - though I definately wouldn't wait for years and years. Or, option 2, take it as a lesson learned and walk away. Face it - you're the one who screwed it up, and these are the consequences. Learn from it, but don't dwell on it, and let it go. If you've loved once, you can love again, it'll just take a while.

 

We can't tell you what's right for you - you have to decide how much she means to you, and how far you're willing to go to get her back.

[NTB]

i don't think women forgive they just forget, and then when you least expect it POW! they hit you with it again..........

[Guest]

How does one avoid crossing the line into creepy and non-stalkerish? For me, I was initially desparate for a conversation to find out what happened since one week before I came abroad she was my fiance and I could not understand why, even if she broke it off, we could not at least talk about what happened and what caused her to change her mind. I begged, I pled I cajoled, and I told all our friends that we should talk. All of this was to no avail. The more I pressed her for a conversation, the more she pushed me away and freaked out.

 

Indeed, she went completely berzerk because (again wrongly) she thought that upon coming abroad I promptly began dating someone else. In other words, in her mind, she thought I was asking to get back together with her while also dating someone else.

 

It was pretty much madness for some time until I figured out, through third parties, what was going on and I was able to disabuse her of the notion that I would date anyone else.

 

Regardless, she keeps saying she does not want to speak and that she can never trust me again.

 

My last gasp effort was the flowers.

 

Assuming she were able to forgive, how would she trust? I presume that she really will never talk to me and that is also the price I have to pay for my actions--and for TELLING her about everything.

[FarAwayCoping]

There are no answers to this only time.

[theantibarbie23]

I think perhaps your girlfriend just had a delayed reaction, which is why she may of seemed ok with things and agreed to the whole engagement in the first place.

 

It's common for some people to feel almost numb to a devastating situation at first but the anger phase always comes sooner or later and the longer it's been repressed, the worse it usually is.

[jft180]

I think everyone here is right about several things. First, the anger phase kicked in when I was not with her so it was impossible to provide her comfort as she entered it. Instead she started speaking to friends. And the friends, upon hearing the situation, started telling her that she was an idiot for agreeing to marry me and that she needed to move on. My guess is that advice compounded the anger and humiliation of my cheating and her emotional attachment to me, and that these friends, as part of their desire to protect her, supported her in the decision to cut me off. As far as I can tell, the instant cut off of communication, from engaged couple to no talking, led to all the other false assumptions on her part, about continued infidelity (which was not true) and really made matters worse—i.e. she seriously attacked my reputation because she thought I was still cheating and did much to engender serious and unnecessary resentment on her part and my part.

 

The flowers were the first gentle gesture I have offered in months. And I debated whether to send them for days. It really was not easy to get them where I am and, given what has happened, I wonder if she understands what this gesture meant and how difficult it was to make.

 

That said, she melted initially upon receiving them, and agreed to thank me via email. I am sure she spoke to her friends again and they immediately counseled her against it. Hence I expect to receive nothing from her and must accept this sense of powerlessness and hopelessness which fills my days as punishment for what I did.

 

I know it may not make sense to people, how I could have viewed her as my foundation and the most important person in the world to me, and cheat. But it is true.

 

I cheated on her throughout the relationship even though she was also the only person I ever saw myself with permanently. But I always doubted that she desired anything serious from me other than (to paraphrase her words) “a temporary thing.” And the moment she lent permanency to the relationship by agreeing to be with me in the US, the cheating stopped and I told her about my sins. At the time I did this, I couldn’t think of how we could have a long term relationship without addressing the infidelity and working through it together.

 

I would have done anything for her and the relationship so that we could have moved past this ugliness. And I would still do anything for her to show that my promises of faithfulness to her and my love for her were true.

 

Regardless, as she started attacking me, I tried to refrain from retaliating (and was mostly successful with a glaring exception or two) and simply told people that I had hurt her terribly and was generally devastated that she would not talk to me.

 

Her response to my hurt was to lash out even further and tell everyone that my pain was all one big act, that I was a pathological liar, a scumbag, and that I had “secret girlfriends” all over the place. Needless to say, this hurt me terribly and put all our mutual friends in a difficult position.

 

Most have chosen sides and can’t seem to understand that, even considering what I did to her, why we can’t behave like civil people around each other and at least try and talk about what happened in private so that, even if we don’t get back together, we can function like adults.

 

And things were compounded many fold because, not only is there no communication, we live and work in a very confined environment. Had we been able to communicate she might have understood that I was not cheating, and all I wanted to do was to hold her, tell how sorry I was, and that the things she thought was happening were not true.

 

But she never gave me the chance.

 

In any event, maybe in time her pain will lesson to a bit such that she might consider speaking to me. In her emails to mutual friends she says that she has many unanswered questions about what happened. I would always like to provide her those answers open and honestly. I have so many unanswered questions of my own.

 

Through friends, however, I get the same mantra from her repeatedly. She says she no longer hates me. She says she has forgiven me. But she will never talk to me again. She will never trust me again. And she will never be with me again.

 

I am not so sure that I believe her when she says she has forgiven me or that she no longer hates me given that she can’t even manage a polite hello when I pass. Instead, she either turns her back on me or ignores me as if I was not there. Of course, this hurts me even more but there is nothing I can do except rant to people I know about how much this hurts, tell them how sorry I am, and how much I truly do love her so that they might pass her some message of devotion. Mostly though, I suffer alone, and hope to repair the pieces of my life—which right now (four months on) are pretty shattered.

 

In any event, I apologize for this long post. I just don’t really know what to do. Being so summarily cut off from someone who was so important to my life is cruel—not as cruel as cheating—but cruel nonetheless.

 

Does anyone think this relationship can ever be repaired? And if not, how do I let go? When does all my hurt stop so that I can begin to look for someone else?

 

For what it is worth, I think she is doing far better than me as she has already begun dating again.

 

And I get to hear from friends who know the new guy that, after hooking up with her, he bragged about it saying that it was “fun. It meant nothing to him. And that he knows he can do better.”

 

It’s all pretty messed up.

 

And I am willing to put up with all this because in some perverse way, I have to believe that no matter what people do to each other, if they have true love, then they will somehow find their way back to each other, forgive, and try and move forward.

 

I know. I am an idiot. This relationship is completely dead. And I was responsible (in large part) for killing it. But (in spite of everything) she really meant, and still means, the world to me. And I really would never cheat again--EVER--NOT AFTER SEEING HOW MUCH I HURT HER AND SUFFERING MYSELF THROUGH ALL THIS!!