A recurring theme

I've posted about my Ex here(I was in a relationship with an African guy who turned out to be the granddaddy of all liars) and here (Imagine my horror at the big reveal - he proved to be likely the biggest man-whore in all of Athens county. He had lord only knows how many girls, flings, and fuck buddies all over my campus, his, and quite likely the Internet)before.

I have a difficult time with concrete judgements, which comes from the awareness that there are so many angles from which to view things, and usually many of them are correct within their context; so my reasoning is always framed within the structure of "if...then" - If I am to look at it solely from the context of our relationship, then I should be mad and never forgive him for what he did - and what he did was really very awful.

But, there was never anything to forgive though he did me a terrible wrong. I was extremely wounded, and before I cut him off I took the opportunity to say to him

"I feel like you reached inside me and pulled my motor out. To experience this kind of dishonesty and cruelty is shocking to me; and I wonder if you understand that this affects the rest of my life. That a betrayal like this is a deep psychic wound that I will have to spend so much time trying to heal from."

Inside that paradigm (is that even the right word?) my responsibility to my own well being means I cannot have him in my life. Pardon the self satisfying digression - you'd think it would be obvious, but he had the gall to ask "If you really loved me how could you just cut me off so completely?" I am amused that he thinks I'm the one with a warped view of love.

Ah.. anyway the way he lied to me made me very concerned about how he will navigate and live a fulfilling life, and when I think of him it is always with the hope that he is becoming a better person.

It would be easy for me to think his betrayal was about me, and while I hold that he had, AND hold him to a responsibility to hold my trust and my love with absolute care, I understand that it wasn't entirely about me. I and my pain were a side effect of his struggle to make his way through this life. More amazingly, I am unbelievably grateful for the lessons I took away from my relationship with him, and I always hope that the pain he caused me earned him some valuable lessons as well.

In still another context, he was also a victim of my struggle to navigate my life. While I tried to do right by my choice, I always knew I did him a great disservice in choosing to be in a relationship with him; and in all my reasoning of our actions, it would be unfair of me to hold against him any disservice he did me, while expecting to be absolved of any I did him.

These different views stem from my larger belief that we should be primarily concerned with the execution of our own lives, and a step beyond that we cannot direct the course of any life except our own. To accept this philosophy we have to submit a down payment of forgiveness for any wrongs that will be done us, and accept as our right a certain degree of forgiveness for any we will do. It might seem a dangerous philosophy, but it is mitigated by the fact that despite our best intentions we will always hurt people, and the philosophy requires that we make a reasonable effort not to by first subscribing to the moral theory "do no harm".

By no means is he a proponent of this theory, but because I am I choose to hold him to the same standards I wish for myself. I didn't have to forgive him, there was already room for him to fuck up, but he violated his responsibility to within reason do me no harm. The consequence of that violation is there is no longer room - or desire - for him in my life.