"Sadness steals your smile. Anger steals your laughter. Hate steals your heart." - Unknown
Ok. I'll get straight to the point. Your marriage or relationship has ended. That's no fun at all. It's tough and you're probably going through unbearable emotional pain and discovering thoughts and feelings that you never even knew existed out there let alone within you. I get that. I get all that, I have been divorced twice.
Pain, hurt, anger, hate, resentment etc are all part of it all. There is no escaping them - actually not recommended to avoid them but that's a whole other post.
What I fail to get is why after sometime, let's say a year, you still choose to continue bearing these negative and toxic emotions especially hate, anger and resentment.
I mean your ex very, very likely couldn't care less whether you hate them or not or whether you are full of anger or not. You can do what you want with your feelings and emotions for all they care.
Instead ask yourself - "If I were to forgive them what would happen?" "How would I feel?" "How would it affect them?"
Very often we equate forgiveness with letting the "perpetrator" get away with it.
Then at some point we state, "I can forgive but I won't forget." But those are just words strung together to make pretty sentence that means zilch. Question is do you have emotional closure?
When you do remember whatever it is that the person did to you, how do you feel? What does it do to you? Does anger still rise up in you? Most likely. If so, do you still think you have forgiven?
Truth is hate, anger and resentment change you. They change your heart and your mind.
And each time you meet someone, when you interact with someone, they don't meet the real you, they meet the person that you have become.
"When you habour anger, hatred and resentment, your body's chemical balance is dramatically disrupted. Your 'flight or fight' responses stay aroused twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That means that hatred, anger and resentment are absolutely incompatible with your peace, joy and relaxation." Dr Phil
You will not be able to give love and compassion because you cannot give something that you don't have.
You can mask it all as much as you please but it will still come through in your actions and words, however subtle.
So, do think about it. Do give yourself a new path to follow by letting go off the resentment, anger and hate.
Stop holding yourself hostage to the past by starting to forgive. Practice makes perfect.
It is easier to start forgiving what happens today than what happened yesterday or a few years ago. If someone cuts in front of you at the lights or something, let it go. Tell him or her to go have their accident elsewhere.
Start forgiving today and what happened yesterday will start falling away as you begin to feel, experience and know how it feels to be free of hate, anger and resentment.