Him: Mind if I bounce some ideas off of you?
Me: go ahead
Him: Guilt is by far under rated.
Me: howso
Him: Well, say, you get drunk, and you beat up a kid because you think he was trying to steal your wallet.
Him: Now, the kid, as the victim, will be in the hospital with a broken arm, it'll heal in a few months, and though he'll be a little shakey, he ultimately gets the knowledge that, as a victim, he was assaulted by what is a 'bad person', and therefor gets the ultimate reassurance that he's the 'good person'.
Him: Of course, as the assailant, you're not only spending time in jail, but left questioning the center of your personal image. Am I a bad person? Maybe I am really am not worth living. If I got married, would I abuse my kids? In this case, you live with this guilt, that there is no cure for.
Me: is that the guilt you speak of?
Him: Well, that's the majority of it. There's a large 'them and us' mentality. There's the instinct to consider ones own wounds before anyone elses. There's a lot of selfishness in the world. I just think guilt is a lot stronger than most people think. A victim has justification, reassurance, and closure, and, (And we're referring to small, personal cases, not murder or anything. o.O). A person with guilt has no sort of way of saying, "It just happened, I'm sorry, it won't happen again," and carrying out their rightful punishment.
Me: but that assumes that the people committing the act feels this guilt
Him: Well, this of course is true, but I think a lot of the time people don't even make any measure to find out if someone truly feels guilt or not. I mean, in this society...
Me: there's no doubt in my mind that many assailants and such don't feel guilty for their actions at all. And thus they don't have those thoughts that you said before runnning through their head.
Me: And I think the people who apologize for thier actions (sincereily apologize) are the ones who truly feel guilty and are truly sorry.
Me: Of course, there are those who are too embarrassed or ashamed to be able to apologize, in which case not apologizing is by no means saying that you don't feel the guilt.
Him: That's true, but how often do people not believe those apologies?
Him: I mean, and I'm talking domestic, most likely family disputes...if you cheat on your wife or slap your kid too hard, would anyone listen to your apology? From everything I've ever heard, cheaters and abusers are bad people. Period.
Me: well, the people who don't believe the sincere apologies, i think, are the people that are comforted with that thought that they are the "good" assaulted by the "bad".
Me: they want to hold on to that feeling, and the best way for them to do that is to keep believing that the guilty party is not sorry...that they deserve more punishment
Him: Ah, good point.
Him: I'm not saying these people shouldn't get punished, heck no.
Me: the people who apologize about things like that are normally forgiven the first time, but then they do it again, well it's then clear that their apology was not sincere
Him: Hmm..I'd suppose so.
Me: what got you thinking about this?
Him: Something's got my girlfriend upset and thinking she can't trust me. And it always gets me thinking, that if she did leave me or if I did do something awful, it'd end up with me sitting here, paralyzed from not only losing her, but even double the effect, if not triple, knowing that it was my fault. While she could walk away, while very hurt, yes, but with that slow healing process, knowing I just wasn't worth trusting, I wasn't the right one, but I'd remain, knowing I pushed away that 'one'.
Him: I suppose the conclusion I should be arriving at is that "When a sincere apology falls on deaf ears, a burning, life-eating guilt is born."
Me: i couldn't relate more to that...i mean my whole [ex-girlfriend] situation ended on what you just described
Me: i mean, i feel guilty about something that i haven't the slightest clue what it is. I just feel like i've done something horrible to push that "one" away. and no matter how sincere my apology was (is) she ignores it, refusing to talk to me, refusing to forgive me...and i am left with this huge burden of guilt that never seems to go away, even after almost a whole year. I sit here wondering all the time where i went wrong, what i did to deserve this horrible punishment
Him: Ah...I never really knew man. I'm sorry to hear...