Did you happen to see the last scene of the latest episode of “The Good Wife?” It was a perfect example of using pseudo forgiveness as a hurtful weapon. Her mother-in-law, lying in her hospital bed, calls her over with a “sweet” smile, gesturing for her to bend down to hear, and says “I forgive you.” The problem with that? There was nothing obvious to forgive, so those words constituted an accusation to which there is no easy response.
It’s a lot like the memory I re-tell of the fight my best friend and I were having when we were somewhere around 11 years old. I mean, a knock Mona’s glasses off her face fist fight. When her mother approached us with the potential for a scolding, my friend bent down, picked up my glasses, and said to me, “I forgive you,” thereby making me the guilty party. I don’t know that she was smart enough to know what she was doing, but I remembered it for years, and understood it only when I was working on “When to Forgive
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