Please tell me about how you cope when forgiveness is refused you. How do you handle the cascade of emotions when your heartfelt, honest apology is blatantly rejected? How do you sort things out and reclaim your sensibility? Any tips or links would be much appreciated. Thanks.

If you have forgiven yourself and you've given your heartfelt apology to someone who would not accept it, then I would say you need to move on

You unfortunately cannot make someone like you or forgive you. It has to be within their heart to do so.

If you have given your best then there is nothing more you can do. It is up to the other person to dig down deep for forgiveness.

Life is so terribly short. It is just not worth staying mad at someone or not forgiving someone.

No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. You just have to learn to move pass it and be the best person you can be.

I hope this helps a little

I agree.

In this world we can only be responsible for our feelings and our behavior. The expectations for forgiveness are your expectations, not those of the other person. And we cannot truly affect someone else's behavior or control their response. We can only do what is right from our own point of view and you have done that.

Remember you can only control and modify your own expectations and cannot project them onto others.

So do not punish yourself for this person not accepting your apology. That is their issue to resolve now not yours.

You have done the right thing and all you can do by apologizing. You ned to modify your expectations now to that of the situation ad accept it and move on.

Try to take the positves from what happened and evolve because thats all we can do is to evolve through our experiences.

So let go of the negative engergy and give it some time. People process feelings and information and anger at different speeds. Maybe they now just need more time.

this was just posted on the headlines news here:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/s...005962,00.html

it's grief cindy. we feel grief at the loss of a friendship.

i think you have done what you can for now. it's up to the other person. but you also can't put a time line of forgiveness. that person needs to heal too.

letting them know that you will keep the door open..for however long is really good step to your own healing.

you never know what is going on in that person's life that hasn't ben shared either.

i'm still your friend.

To err is human, to forgive is devine. If the person in question cannot forgive you, then it's a worse situation for them. It's hard to carry around a grudge or bitterness. You have to look at it from that perspective.

It may be that someday the person will forgive you, but you need to forgive yourself and move on to other things. If forgiveness ever comes, welcome it with open arms.

Thank you all, you have helped me put things into a better perspective. My expectations have really been a last ditch hope and there is no point in that. I suppose it's an object lesson right from Matthew 7:6 and I need to learn it again and again. You all are terrific.

Done..................

Cindy, sometimes we mess up and when we do we ask the person we hurt for forgiveness or a chance to move forward agreeing to disagree. Unfortunately life doesn't play out the way we want it to and that forgiveness is never given back to us.

My best advice is to step back and wait on this person to accept your apology and hope that in time their compassion will outweigh their anger or hurt. If it doesn't then you must move on and let it go. As hard as that is, it is what you have to do to let go of the grief.

To forgive is the hardest thing for some people and easier for others. I cannot hold a grudge to save my life. It will eat me alive until I fix what broke. For others it is their way of building a wall to protect themselves. Try to remember the old saying "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." I hope things work out for you and this person. Hugs.

I hope you're able to sort things out with your friend. This is something that's been heavy on my mind this past month. Sometimes you don't even know what you've done and friends disappear. I had a long talk with my pdoc about this last week and she said it's not my loss, it's theirs. Something she said I wrote down so I wouldn't forget. A friendship is like sand in your hand. If you hold it loose in your palm, it stays there. But as soon as you close your hand tightly, it slips through your fingers. A lesson I learned the hard way

Thanks, BP, and everyone else, too. It finally sunk into me that what I hadn't done was to do some forgiving myself. BP, in your analogy, I am the sand— deliberately dropped back onto the beach. For some time, I suppose, I denied that it could be true, but it is. When I finally forgave the abusive behavior, freedom became mine. I will always care a great deal about that person, but I can never again trust in what I believed was a true friendship.