I’ve had this kind of conversation before. Every time it is the saddest imaginable conversation, because at the end, in spite of great affection, both parties will be dead to each other. Alive and walking around in the world, and doing acts of kindness, and trying to be the best they can be, and dead to each other.

We don’t come to this kind of final conversation lightly. First of all, we have to care enough about the other person to extend them the final chance to avoid our mutual deaths. The average jerk who acts like a jerk and hurts us in a jerky fashion does not get this kind of final discussion. We just write them off, smile when we see them and avoid anything of consequence with them. But with people we deeply care about, who have deeply hurt us, it sometimes comes to this final conversation.

Personally, I tend to avoid starting these conversations once I’m fully aware of the hideous terrain we are both stuck in. Once the other party insists that nothing you have said changes anything, you are pretty much done. Words at that point have no ability to change the emotional reality that makes it impossible for us to continue as friends. In fact, if you express yourself clearly you are only making the wound deeper by seeming to blame the other person for being heartless, clueless, unforgiving, unyielding, rigid, needy, childish, etc.

The outline of this talk is always the same. The person calling will say they love you, that they have taken about all that they can take, that they have tried their best to be your friend and give you what you need but nothing they have done has been enough for you. They will place it on you, pronouncing the final death.

After all the aggravation, the soul searching, the health threatening stress of trying to find a mutual solution with somebody who is unable to overcome their righteous anger, their inability to forgive, words are of limited use. That said, it is good to remain honest until the end.

Trust me, you will get no acknowledgment of your honesty, and truly it means nothing in that moment. But you remain true to yourself by not pretending that all of your hard work has produced any tangible result. It is time to put down the cadaver of an old friendship you were carrying, alone, in hopes of a miracle.

I find that at the very end of these talks sometimes a last precisely calibrated insult can be very helpful in allowing your dear friend to permanently write you out of their life. At that moment, it is the least you can do by way of mercy.

Being unforgiving means you cannot let go of your hurt and anger, even after someone does their best to make amends. Even when someone expresses sincere regret for their harmful actions and humbly asks for your forgiveness, you can’t forgive.

This kind of angry person, who tends to live in a zero sum world of winners and losers, cannot forgive themselves, cannot calm themselves when they’re upset, have not learned to sit with strong, painful emotions and wait until they are calmer to try to resolve a conflict. Unregulated anger is destructive, it arises from pre-verbal fears and shame and it extends to an inability to forgive.

Holding on to anger is a maladaptive way to try to feel righteous and superior. This type, with its unhealthy bent toward indignation and rage, is clueless about how to resolve conflicts with others and within themselves.

When you think about it, it’s pretty clear that you have no obligation to forgive someone who hurts you and blames you entirely for making them hurt you. When no apology is offered, hurtful behavior is never acknowledged, your obligation to forgive disappears. That is not being unforgiving, it’s health, common sense and what’s best for yourself and other people that you love.

Those who can’t forgive, no matter what? Dangerous, wounded, supremely destructive motherfuckers. We might well feel very sorry for them, if we care about them, but not being able to forgive their eternal blaming anger does not make us unforgiving.

This type will force her mate to kill his best friends, and her mate will do it because he feels he has no choice but to become enraged at his best friends and kill them. Otherwise he will be derided forever as a contemptible weakling. The alligator he is wrestling with will point toward his more sympathetic friends and tell him that they are the vicious alligators and if he doesn’t fight them to the death he’s a pussy.

As long as he stays angry, he will never have to to be tormented by his own immature, self-harming actions, which is the greatest blessing to this eternally trapped poor bastard type.