Pathological forgiveness is a key component of many abusive relationships.

Pathological forgiveness is a key component of many abusive relationships.

Obviously all of the moral blame should fall on the abusers. 

But much of the causal explanation for ongoing abusive relationships is the abused saying stuff like: 

• "I just want to give them one more chance"
• "They didn't mean it! They're not like that"
• "They just had a bad childhood."
• "We've been through too much for me to leave them now"

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And so many other mechanisms of forgiving somebody too much.

Of course, the Law of Equal and Opposite Advice applies. Many people in society (most, I dare say) should increase their forgiveness levels. 

But some people, and disproportionately people who stay in abusive relationships, need to forgive less. They need to see that their forgiveness is leading to ongoing suffering and that you should turn the other cheek once, but if they keep kicking you in the teeth, you need to get out of there. 

It reminds of a time I was in a really bad situation but I felt a lot of compassion to the person hurting me because I knew they'd had a really troubled upbringing. 

I described it as being in a room with an aggressive dog who was biting me. I knew the dog was only aggressive because they'd been abused as a puppy. 

I knew I could fight back and stop the dog, but I didn't want to hurt it. I wanted to help the dog. 

But I was being hurt. A lot.

It took talking to external people about the problem to realize that I just had to get out of the room. 

I didn't have to fight the dog. I would hurt the dog, and I still didn't want to do that. But I didn't have to stay around the dog. 

And while I do want to prevent suffering in the world, there's a lot of suffering. I don't have to help whoever is closest by and most emotionally salient. I can convert my desire to help that particular person into a desire to help others where the situation is more tractable and causes me less extreme damage. 

Which is all to say - forgiveness is a virtue, but as with all virtues, it comes with a ton of caveats and nuance. 

Don't hold onto anger, because that just hurts you. 

Convert that anger into the action of setting up systems to avoid being continuously hurt by others. 

And sometimes, that just means leaving.