Chuck Bryant

Like there's it's more nuanced than that and that you can be a fully functioning person.

emotionally developed person who says, you know what?

I don't forgive you.

I may never forgive you, but I'm still going on with my life.

And if the point of forgiveness is to achieve peace in yourself, if you can achieve peace in yourself and you do it without forgiving somebody because you don't want to forgive them or you don't feel like you should forgive them, then that's okay too.

As long as you're getting inner peace, that's the point.

Yeah, and there is a school of thought saying that in cases where a harm has been committed to you that could happen again, you may be more likely to have that harm committed to you again if you do forgive too much.

There is research about spousal abuse.

That when you're quick to forgive the abuser, then you are victimized more regularly than spouses who aren't as forgiving.

And that's based on operant learning, basically.

You're less likely to engage in a behavior that has a negative consequence.

They've done plenty of research on that.

And a lot of psychologists say like, yeah, forgiveness is great.

But while you shouldn't be bitter, there are a lot of times when you should not forgive somebody and that's OK.

Yeah, there's a whole there's an article from 1999 on psychology today called Must We Forgive?

Yeah.

And it is really interesting.

It's fascinating.

This psychologist writes about probably half a dozen or more people and their different individual circumstances and the reasons they chose not to forgive.

And she kind of pigeonholes them into like three general categories because psychologists love doing that.