advice about not blaming yourself and being kind to yourself about your mistakes is all well and good if you've not done anything that bad, but what if you have? what if you really fucked up someone's life? what if you're genuinely a cheat or a rapist or someone who physically hurts people? can you really pull the be kind and forgive yourself thing, should you not be allowed to? i usually think of euripedes' herakles who, after murdering his wife and children in a fit of madness and being logically convinced he should commit suicide now, is advised to, and i heard it paraphrased, 'suffer and survive.' in other words, to just have committed a horrible mistake, and have that just be a thing he did. Dunno. thought experiment i guess??? like, what do you do if it isn't 'not a big deal,' what if it's yes big deal, and you hecked up that for real?
My first thought is that probably 9 out of 10 people who believe they've done something that bad really haven't, or only played a very minor part in it.
Well, I mean, I would commit suicide (if I'd like raped someone or committed some other True Evil or w/e). Or at least, I'd berate myself endlessly if I couldn't bring myself to do so. That probably wouldn't be the "right choice", but whatever. I wouldn't want to live with that and am selfish as fuck. In real life, my main gameplan is generally to avoid ever doing a bad thing such as that so I don't have to face that outcome.
Hello. Your lovely neighborhood adulterer here to talk about this thing. So a couple of years back I cheated on my girlfriend. As well as just completely destroyed a friend's happiness and turned a forum into a swirling hell pit of awful shit! Was fun. By which I mean it wasn't fun at all and I still fucking awful about it. For a variety of reasons. I didn't talk to everyone involved in things like I should have. I jumped impulsively into a thing because I wanted it. I pushed someone into sex in a way that, while we've talked about it and he is fine, I still don't feel entirely comfortable with. The consent involved was in a dubious weird land that I just feel stepped too far outside of "yes this is informed and fine consent". I set out to fix someone's mental state with romance not because I loved them but because I felt bad for them and they were an exciting and new project for me. And I went about not even thinking anything was wrong and even publicly talked about things happily. Which is how the story got to my girlfriend. This is all pretty atrocious. And I still feel bad about it. Especially because there were fun times with him that I still like because I feel like my guilt should instantly make everything awful too. And because it can't I am a bad person who doesn't actually care. I have however learned from this and that I think is the important bit. The fact that I don't do that shit and know that what I did was fucked up is important. It is far more important than my guilt. Perhaps not everyone can do something like that and come out with things as put together as I have. I still have my girlfriend and my friends after all. And the guy and I worked out some stuff about it a while back. But even if I hadn't had all this so long as I learned and didn't fucking do it again that is what is important. Killing myself for this or something conceivably worse that I could do is not an option. If I do I've not only killed any chance for self-improvement and bettering myself but I've made myself a coward. To kill myself would be to be too weak to live with the weight of what I have done and to try and become a better person. Heroes sometimes fuck up and do fucked up shit. Cú Chulainn cheated on his wife numerous times and killed his son that he bore with another woman. But he was an amazing person. A good person. He was honorable and brave. And I'm going to be honorable and brave too, dammit.
there's certainly a "you are human, you are are strong enough to be better than this" sort of self-kindness that i think is necessary for folks who've done serious wrong. if someone like that concludes that they're worthless irredeemable garbage, any improvement in their behavior is going to be really goddamn difficult. edited because the first paragraph was dumb >_> also, @Aondeug , i drafted this post without seeing yours, but you made the same point much more effectively! as someone who's made his share of swirling interpersonal hell pits (and had them very much in mind while reading all this), i really appreciate your story. :]
I have Done Some Shit and also have brainweasels, and what helps me is the idea that we can live and go forward and do better. And doing better may or may not be making amends, and means trying to be more helpful and kind and considerate going forward. I am . . . not super great at self-kindness, so the going forward bit is important to me.
Personally I'm... neither the best nor the worst person to ask for advice about this (see below) but my personal view is that it's more important that someone has a genuine understanding that they have done something wrong and are actively avoiding repeating the mistake than that they've done something terrible. The first part might not be important forever, depending on what was done, but the second part should stay whether or not the original act has been resolved. Spoiler: possibly triggery personal experience I accidentally pressured someone into a sex act. They cut off contact, so I can't directly make up for what I did, but I sure as hell am trying to learn ways to communicate better so I never do that again.
