The Path to Closure and Self-Forgiveness is Finding Your Own Redemption

Closure, Self-Forgiveness and Redemption

This is an excerpt from my autobiography:

From Loser To Seducer

Relationship Redemption:
Finding Closure and Self-Forgiveness
 
By Frank Kermit
 
We all make mistakes in life. If you have ever tried to get into a relationship, are in a relationship, or are recovering from a relationship, chances are about 100% you screwed up somewhere on something. If you are lucky, you have a partner (or ex-partner) that either has a lousy memory, or a partner that chooses not to remind you too often of the times you goofed.
 
However, with all that said some mistakes are bigger than others. Insignificant mistakes can be corrected easily. But those mistakes that can detour the journey of your entire relationship, maybe even costing you the relationship itself, are a little harder to process. Even when your ex partner either forgives you, or just does not care anymore about your error that forced about the parting of your ways, people still need to do something to achieve a sense of peace with their pasts. People need to forgive themselves. And for some people, self-forgiveness is mission impossible. In fact, those people who more easily forgive others may struggle indefinitely to forgive themselves for a number of their relationships gaffs, both great and small.
 
There is a real danger that this particular population may very well get into the bad habit of punishing themselves with self-sabotaging behaviors, which makes their circumstances even worse, causing even more acts of unforgiveable bad judgment, and the cycle continues until a person can be overrun with a horrible shame-and-guilt complex that forbids them from the capacity to function in an emotionally healthy relationship.
 
For people who find exceptional struggle with forgiving-thy-self I have often found that the key to the ability to forgive yourself for the relationship faux-pas of your past is reaching a point when you can trust yourself, not to commit the same mistake again. Once you prove to yourself that you have new behavior patterns that would prevent you from ever making the same mistake again, some people find a divine compassion for themselves that they previously could not tap into.
 
People, who repeat the same negative behavior patterns in relationships, will inevitably continue to do so, until they take an active role in learning new behavior patterns, and repeating those new behavior patterns, until those behavior patterns become unconscious habits. When it comes to unconscious habits in relationships, those new habits will foster into an intuition that will give the relationship seekers a sixth sense that will keep them away from bad relationship partners, and point them within the perimeters of potential premiere partners.
 
Sometimes mistakes can include things like infidelity, wrong priorities, superimposing unrealistic expectations, committing too soon, losing their sense of self in a relationship, becoming too needy or dependant on their partner, acting out personal issues from childhood that have nothing to do with their current partner, or simply choosing the wrong people to date. All of these errors can be understandable in their unique contexts, but they can all destroy the best relationships that come into your life.
 
When seeking help in relationships, a person tends to want to seek out ways to fix what they keep doing wrong that lands them to lose their relationship opportunities.
 
Even when they learn what exactly they did wrong, and intellectually know what they need to do next, it is not until they go through a real life experience to process that new knowledge into action, that a person can start to feel confident that they will stop making those same mistakes again. Until that challenge is met, the certainty of their change-work is in question. However, once a person commits to a new behavior pattern such that, they have now reach a point where he or she can trust in themselves, to never make those same mistakes again; THAT is when a person can get to the point of self-forgiveness. In that moment of a newfound respect for self, is the RELATIONSHIP REDEMPTION that allows for even the most hurtful past of any relationship wound to find ultimate closure.
 
In closure on our pasts, through the self-forgiveness of our own personal relationship redemption, we will find the beginning of our new chapter in the book of our life.
 
Frank Kermit