Life is a long game. Living together - even more so. And no one is perfect, so they say that it is important for partnerships to sometimes be able to forgive. But we as humans sometimes take things to extremes. Psychological practice is replete with cases of repressed grievances that are not spoken out, under the slogan of self-deception “I have forgiven everything” and attempts by victims to justify even criminal forms of violence. But today I want to talk about other cases. About those cases when, on the contrary, we refuse to forgive no matter what, and not at all because the person does not deserve it...Each of us has been hurt at some point, and even if adequacy wins, surely everyone knows the feeling when you want not only not to forgive, but somewhere deep down you also want to take revenge and torment the offender for the suffering caused. If, after your partner has caused you some kind of pain, you cannot return to your previous pattern of relationships and behavior - it means you also fell into this trap and are manipulating, trying to compensate for some deeper trauma at the expense of another. Or maybe you yourself are that “other”? The one who is not forgiven no matter what you do, from whom now there will always be LITTLE of everything: little love, attention, gifts, and every offense is remembered in detail. I want to talk about what is not often talked about, and about than talking can sometimes be very painful. About what we ourselves sometimes do not notice behind our grievances. About guilt and jealousy in relationships and how these guilt and jealousy are actually used... Accusations are used as a means of manipulating a partner to force the other, guided by a sense of duty, to compensate for some deep-seated trauma, the cause of which is not actually the partner... But this trauma is so deep that it is impossible to touch it alone, and at the same time it feels so strong that the very thought that no one can ever compensate for it seems mortal. And the wise unconscious makes a choice... If staying with this trauma is fatal, then you need to make sure that someone heals it, and the best and most proven way to force someone else to “heal” you? – that’s right... through blaming and imposing responsibility... Let’s assume that before some event (quarrel, insult, temporary separation, maybe even betrayal), the girl had a normal attitude towards her boyfriend’s friends and hobbies, and after some event, she insists that the guy is because of that the person who offended her should never again, for example, communicate with someone or do something. In such a relationship it is difficult for both. It hurts for those who live with resentment, being in the illusion that their partner’s compliance with his conditions will make something easier for him. And for someone who has done wrong in such a relationship, of course, it is also very scary to be, because if each of your faults is used to correct your behavior conditionally “forever” - one day they will strangle you, because life is long and sooner or later it will accumulate. indicates that the partner does not know how to forgive and uses the guilt of the other to satisfy his traumatized childhood need, almost certainly from the preverbal or narcissistic period of his development... Why from there? Because only there children's emotions are so comprehensive and frightening that it seems to us as if we will die and will no longer be able to live... Not a single betrayal in adult life is able to cause pain, such a level as a helpless child experiences, in fear that his abandoned and now he is alone. I have long wanted to show how this works, and, fortunately, several of my recent clients have given permission to use their therapy cases as case studies. But I am sure that very, very many people will recognize themselves. Dialogues are given with abbreviations, but close to the text...Case 1K: He hurt me, and now I react sharply to his behavior because of which it seems to methat I’m not important. T: Do I understand correctly that before this conflict, you were calm about what your boyfriend was doing? K: Yes, I didn’t perceive it so acutely before. T: Can he do something to make amends? K: I don’t know. I can't forgive him. He should never do this again (then there is a list of what exactly not to do). T: Wait, but you said that BEFORE you quarreled, you were NORMAL about the fact that he could, for example, go out with friends? Can he do something so that you forgive him, and you can communicate again like in the beginning, when everything suited you and he didn’t have to sacrifice his freedom? Can he also do something “one-time” so that the conflict ends and everything is as before? K: I don’t know. I'll probably always remember. He now needs to always do his best without even reminding me of it. It's like I can't forgive. It doesn’t work out. T: Then it turns out that you’re kind of telling your boyfriend, “I can’t forgive you because I want to use your guilt towards me as a guarantee that you will now always do as I want to make me feel good”? K: It looks like yes... - the girl hesitated embarrassedly, it’s not very pleasant to admit this, but it’s no longer possible to get away. T: And that feeling that you felt during that quarrel, and which now you want to avoid by forbidding using guilt to help your boyfriend do something and forcing you to “heal” - is this feeling familiar to you? K: Yes, familiar... Then, after a couple of phrases of explanation, we plunged into a hypnotic intervention with regression. There were several starting points. In childhood - of course, but the most significant were the emotional charges of the perinatal period even before birth and the emotions adopted in the womb from the mother... It was there that the roots of the resentment were hidden, which in all its glory began to pour out on the relationship partner... At the end of the therapeutic process , when the injury was healed, the girl herself even wanted to laugh at the fact that she reacted so sharply to completely simple offenses and the guy’s communication with friends, and thinking about them she stopped associating them with the fear of abandonment or unimportance. Case 2 Another woman made a request about resentment and jealousy. Many years ago, her husband cheated on her, and she could not forgive him. In this situation, as in the previous one, the conflict manifested itself in the fact that she began to forbid him a lot, and demand something that she had not demanded before, and the man naturally resisted at times, then he simply could not meet the unrealistic bar of demands, in the end she was even more offended by the fact that he did not compensate for his guilt and her pain. And the situation repeats itself. T: Do I understand correctly that before you found out about the betrayal, you didn’t demand from your husband what you demand now? K: Yes, I didn’t pay attention before that. T: Okay, then what do you need to get from him or maybe finally hear so that you can both continue to live in peace? K: No, I can’t forgive him... What he did cannot be changed, so now he must always behave perfectly to atone for your guilt. And I suffer because he doesn't do this. He’s just insensitive, he doesn’t care at all - the client’s expression reflects mixed feelings, she either wants to cry or is angry... But I just keep asking... T: How do you think your husband feels in the relationship when you make such demands on him? K: Of course, probably not very much, but that doesn’t matter! It’s his own fault, if he really loved me, he would prove it by caring about my feelings by fulfilling my requests. T: But before, you didn’t need him to do this in order to feel loved? So you used to feel that he loved you through some of his other actions and that was enough? K: Yes, but now it’s not enough. Now I need more to forgive him. T: Okay, let me clarify, if he does whatever you want for a while, will you really forgive him? How will this be expressed? He will be able to do something againfrom the fact that you allowed him before, but forbid him now? The woman did not immediately understand the question and hesitated. K: Of course not... I will never be able to allow him what may have been normal before. T: Do I understand correctly, that if something happens, are you ready for your husband to leave you? What will you do if he simply can’t stand it and leaves on his own, accepting that the relationship is ruined and cannot be saved? Will he decide to just get over his loss and move on? You understand that if your relationship does not become normal again as before you began to demand something from him, then it turns out that your husband simply has nothing to try for if he receives nothing in return, except the need to satisfy you in an exchange for a kind look?.. After all, our life is more than just a relationship... You use his guilt to get what you want, ignoring the fact that if he follows everything, then such a relationship will be unbearable for him. A man is an equal partner. He is not a mother, not a father, not a child to remain in a relationship in which he himself does not receive the desired comfort solely out of a sense of duty or guilt... Moreover, you are not a child in fact to be afraid to leave you, in fear that you can’t cope... What will you do if this happens?..K: Then this will definitely mean that he is the last traitor. Destroyed me and dumped me! T: Do I understand correctly that you still want your partner to heal your pain, and not you yourself? K: Yes, absolutely right. I didn’t do this to myself... He owes me! T: Okay... And yet... Let’s do it again. Before that everything was fine. But then your husband hurt you. He tried to ask for forgiveness, but that’s not enough for you, do you want him to always behave in a certain way now? K: Yes, exactly like that. T: Then it turns out that you are using your husband’s guilt as a tool of manipulation to tie him to you and make him somehow different so that you always feel good?..K: Yes, I want him to become a person who will NEVER hurt me again.T: It looks like you have a lot of pain and a lot of it...K: Yes it is. She's unbearable. She's killing me... That's why I came, I don't know what to do. T: Then listen to me for a while. The main difference between the psyche of a child and the psyche of an adult is the ability to cope. What is unbearable for a child is normal for an adult, because he is an adult, he is not afraid. An adult may feel unpleasant, painful, and sad, but he does not feel betrayal as a fear of losing himself or something from which he can seem to die. And they really don’t die from it. But for the child’s psyche, some experiences are directly related to the fear of death. And if in childhood there was a trauma of rejection and the fear of dying without a parent and this trauma was not worked out, then any similar situation will refer to the primary experiences of the childhood level, when there were really a lot of emotions... And then, probably, your husband’s betrayal sends you to exactly that state , which you once did not live - about the feeling of betrayal and abandonment by the closest person without whom further life is not possible. There may be other states - the feeling that I am not important, that they don’t love me, that I am not unique... You think that you cannot forgive your husband, but it seems that you hope that having a trump card in the form of accusations you will finally be able to force at least someone -to do for you what your mother never did... At this moment the woman burst into tears and asked me how I guessed that her entire childhood from six months to 4 years was spent with her grandmother almost alone while her mother worked.. .K: I really know these feelings... It’s as if I’ve been living with them in the background all my life. T: And again and again different people, like your mother, make you experience them? K: Yes... T: But the thing is that others are NOT mom. They can never evoke the same feelings. And they will definitely never be able to heal them. Being abandoned by your mother and being abandoned by someone are completely different and disproportionate things... K: I am +79676686808