COULD YOU FORGIVE HIM ?? ( Archived) (24)

No and I just bet that poor man is twisted into a pretzel with parent guilt

It's hard because, of the ordeal but,yes you need to at least forgive.

Who knows what that family were really like? Maybe the father knows that somewhere along the way , they went wrong in the way they brought up the older son, or maybe the older son was just evil and the parents could nothing about it.
Either way, the father is going to be full of guilt, justified or not.
The older son is all he left now, so he will have to forgive him to move on.
Very sad situation

There are some things in life that are beyond forgiveness

Hi V.. He's very religious and I think that is why he was able to forgive his son.

Well, if you show enough compassion and love with each child one could turn into a sociopath and in the long run it hurts.

Yes, I agree, even if the two sons were treated exactly the same, were given the same amount of love , one can turn out bad. The parents are not always to blame. But my point was that, even when they are not to blame, they blame themselves. That father could be eaten up inside with thoughts of "if we had done this or that, things might have turned out different"
And he will have to forgive to be able to move on

That's the way it "should" be but in my own family, my mother favored my younger sister (4 years younger) and my father favored me. My sister turned out to be wild, carefree and a problem in school. I was and still am quiet, reserved and married once 42 years ago. She married twice and is on an S/O relationship that might fail.

I have one daughter who is in law enforcement and happily married.

She has one daughter 40 years old who is stand offish and got into a bit of trouble when she was younger and another daughter 35 years old who is a very sweet young lady.

My sister and I are like night and day in every way.

forgive stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence or mistake. > excuse (an offence or mistake).

Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

I think there two aspects of forgiveness as defined above, but also other aspects according to the event relating to aportioning blame.

The cessation of anger and resentment towards the elder son, may not be the same as excusing his behaviour. Forgiveness could therefore be a result of the passage of time, the waning of the grieving process, or simply running out of energy to be angry and resentful. Forgiveness could be an unconscious process, a conscious rationalization of events, or self-talking/self-convincing on the basis of religious beliefs.

The father may blame the son as the direct perpetrator and also regard himself as responsible, as has been mentioned by others. However, the grieving process tends to have an angry phase and some of that anger may be directed at the mother's behaviour, or even at the younger son's, if the father felt that their behaviours had an impact on the elder son's.

There may be external factors, or other people who are deemed to have had an influence and where blame may be aportioned. This would allow a certain cognitive dissonance, allowing easier forgiveness of the son and the self.

Religion also may provide a form of cognitive dissonance as it could be accepted as simply being god's will.

This is a mighty complex thing to rationalise if you are in the situation, from the outside based on so little information, its impossible. I find it impossible to imagine that I could withdraw unconditional love from my child, but my perspective is from the security of knowing that its extremely unlikely to happen to me.