Is It Grace or Purposeful Ignorance?

There’s a difference between grace and purposeful ignorance.  Grace doesn’t translate into ignorance. You can have grace and forgive someone, rising above what they did to you, without being purposefully ignorant.  In other words, grace doesn’t mean forgiving and then returning again and again to the same situation.  You can’t move on that way.  I speak from experience and the worst lie you can tell yourself is that they’ve changed.

When you’ve been in a long-term relationship with a narcissist, he or she will guilt you into thinking that forgiveness means forgetting and returning to him or her without question.  I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but without your narc getting in-depth counseling and actually showing they are no longer co-dependent that will be a mistake. 

They should be able to go for 6 months to a year without being in a relationship with anyone nor dating anyone and that means not even having an emotionally intimate relationship with another woman or man, especially a former girlfriend, boyfriend or significant other.  They should be able to stand on their own two feet without having to rely on anyone else for their emotional well-being and ego for at least that long. Again, grace doesn’t mean purposeful ignorance.

I can’t tell you how many chances I gave my narcissistic ex, allowing him to manipulate me and my feelings again and again.  I used ‘grace’ to explain and defend my decisions to return, convincing myself God wanted us together.  The reality is God wasn’t telling me to be with him, or to return to him, I was telling myself.  The reality is, I was always in control and could have left, but I allowed my feelings to govern my truth and my actions.  The reality is, I was in the trauma bond cycle of abuse and didn’t want to admit it.  I chose purposeful ignorance over grace and that’s a hard pill to swallow.  The truth is, no one in my family nor any of my friends would ever describe me as weak.  They will all tell you I wasn’t at all myself when I was with, let’s call him D.  They will tell you I’m one of the strongest people they know both mentally and emotionally.  Afterall, I’m a trial attorney, a single mom and I’m fiercely independent, but I was still susceptible to a narcissist.

Even though I spent my career fighting for the rights of the vulnerable and abused, I didn’t see him coming, but once I saw him for who he was, I continued to choose ignorance over grace.  Now some of you will say, don’t be so hard on yourself.  I’m a southern girl and tell it like it is. Keeping it real. It’s better than operating with rose colored glasses and refusing to see the truth.  Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade.  It’s not that I’m ignorant by any means, but when you’re with a narc your world shifts and you literally cannot think straight so you make poor decisions.  You purposely choose ignorance over grace.  You become good at convincing yourself you’re operating from grace.  You become very good at explaining away the red flags and poor behavior of a narcissist, to your detriment.  It’s just more convenient. Not smart, but definitely convenient.

Breaking away and divorcing D 3 years ago, meant I had to accept what happened, my role in it, and dig deep to grow out of who I had been so I could begin to redefine my life and grow into who I was and am becoming.  So, when I say grace doesn’t mean purposeful ignorance, I don’t say it lightly nor in a mean-spirited way.  Not at all, I say it to wake you up to the fact that you must distinguish between the two and understand YOU are in control.  You can forgive, but that doesn’t mean you must forget and allow yourself to be further hurt.   God doesn’t want that for you.  The Universe doesn’t want that for you, but you have to not want that for you. You must take that moment in time to dig deep so you can redefine your life and thrive out of the ashes of what was, not what could have been.  That is when you choose grace over purposeful ignorance.  

You accept you were in that situation to learn from it, not to be tormented by it.  You choose grace by choosing yourself over further manipulation.  You are a beautiful soul that deserves a beautiful life, a redefined life on your terms.  You are the redefined woman.