Dear farnaz,

you’re welcome!

i am stronger now and i prefer to be alone than in bad company

You’re right! Better be alone than get involved with bad people out of desperation.

i have a question for you , how many of people who you needed to forgive for any reason are still in your life ?for me most of them gone for good .

Well, my mother is one such person. She is very critical of me and likes to blame me while refusing any responsibility of her own. As I have been working on myself, I’ve put up some defenses and boundaries, to protect myself from her. About a year ago I complained about a physical pain I had, and she accused me of being a hypochondriac and used the opportunity to send some more criticism my way. So she used my vulnerability and my honest sharing to hurt me. That’s when I decided I’ll never again be vulnerable around her, and I’ll never again expect any empathy from her.

But we do stay in a superficial contact. In fact we rarely speak nowadays because I live in another country, and I mostly speak with my father on the phone. So our contact is minimal but it still exists.

I’ve also forgiven my father, who was her enabler and failed to protect me from my mother’s toxicity. But he hurt me much less than she did…

And I’ve also forgiven a relative of mine, who is a fun person to be around, but sometimes doesn’t care about other people and only cares about her own needs. But I don’t want to lose a friendship with her, so I decided not to expect much from her, but to enjoy her company when we meet once or twice per year.

I actually don’t believe people who were deceitful would stay once you saw through them.

Yes, deceitful people don’t like to be “seen through”. Fortunately I’ve never had experience with deceitful people, only with very critical people (my mother). But in both cases, we need to set boundaries to protect ourselves…