If you do discover how to forgive yourself, get over that mistake, make it stop eating you up inside, PLEASE share it! And I don't mean the normal Christian cliches -- I mean a real solution (I don't mean to be offensive with that statement -- I just hate hearing the pious "just trust God, lean on Him" kind of generalities). I'm in a similar place of re-living a horrible mistake and wishing I could go back and fix it but knowing that's impossible, so I just hate myself, too, and I'd LOVE to get out of this spot. The answer is connected to trusting God, reading His Word, and praying, but what are we missing that we're still in the "I can't get over this" phase? I'm so sorry you feel this way!! Still praying for peace for you.

I don't want to spout off any pious cliches here, I hate them myself.

I've made some big whopping mistakes in my time. When I was younger (in my twenties, thirties, and even into my forties) my life was total chaos. I didn't know I had DID. Oh, the mistakes I made! I will live with them for the rest of my life.

There is no one thing that has helped me get beyond the past with its records of missteps. I'm not going to say that time heals all wounds, cause I don't believe that. Time itself does nothing: it's what we do with the time given us that helps us along with our healing.

I think the basis of all forgiveness--whether it's towards ourselves or another--is the acknowlegment
of our humanness.

You can drive yourself insane hanging on to the crazy thinking of, "If only I hadn't done this or that, Sharon wouldn't have left me."

You can't know that for sure. Sooner or later the relationship would have come to an end. You are a wounded human being who was reaching out for help. There is no shame in that, no shame in being who you are.

No one (but God) is going to always be there perfectly for you, just as you are not always going to be there all the time for others. You're going to fail them from time to time, because that's what imperfect people do. They're going to fail you in some manner.

Holding on to what you perceive as your mistakes with Sharon is a form of self punishment. You feel you deserve all the blame, but I believe that whenever a relationship of any kind sours, both parties involved had something to do with it.

It's not important to rake back over all of that to try and sort out who did what, etc. Give yourself the kind of grace you would extend to someone you love if they made a huge mistake. It's hard to forgive ourselves, to find that tenderness for ourselves that we can more easily feel for a loved one who has stumbled and knows it.

You are bigger and more valuable than any mistake you could ever make. You are deserving of gifting yourself with the grace to be human and fail at times.

I know my words may not help, I know you have to believe these things for yourself in order for the words to do any good. But I had to say something in response to your obvious suffering.

I've noticed you quote Scripture from time to time. It may help to apply Jesus' words about forgiveness to yourself. We are to love others as we love ourselves; I believe it's also true that we are to forgive ourselves as we forgive others.