I know you hate me

Lets look at the other side of forgiveness.

Lets look at the forgiven. (Or those that want forgiveness)

My interest in this topic is recent, it comes from recent experiences with people that are obsessed with it, talk about it, focus on it.

With distance I'm putting things together. There's a pattern here.

They consistently (even constantly) talk about how they've "forgiven" themselves. If you tell them you've forgiven them for some incident, they also take that forgiveness and apply it to everything they've ever done with or to you. Any forgiveness is applied in a blanket manner.

In an argument, there's always the phrase "I know you hate me".

These are people that are obsessed by forgiveness because they want it so much.

But they won't change the things they do, the way they behave. They continue to act in callous disregard, then deny they did it. Admission of any wrongdoing requires days, weeks, months, even years of discussion after discussion, all the while racking up more offenses.

They are often VERY good at arguments, although they don't stay on the point. Any conflict leads to a furious, vicious scattershot of statements, hundreds of non-sequiters, denials, red herrings, vicious attacks, empathetic half truths... Anything and everything to confuse, obfuscate, and avoid actually taking responsibility.

The core though, is in those phrases. They want forgiveness because they see it as a way to wipe the slate clean. They want that not so they can be a better person, or repair the relationship, but so they can salve their conscience enough to continue to do what they want.

"I know you hate me" is the sign of someone that has been doing this a long long time. They believe they are deserving of hate, because they so often HAVE been deserving of hate. They KNOW they are behaving badly at some level; they've seen far to many people walk away hating them.

So, even while the offended person is trying to repair, they are assuming that someone else hates them.

Oddly, as aware as the people I've seen are of this entire thing, they spend so much of their time learning to lie to themselves, that they continue that pattern. They lie to you, they lie to themselves, they lie to their therapist, they don't seem to KNOW the way out.

They don't WANT to know, that would mean they need to change their habits.

And that is a non-starter. Better to leave their victims behind them.

And lie.