forgiveness for your own failure to forgive
I have to make direct amends, put out my hand and say that I'm sorry and ask the man's forgiveness for my own failure to forgive. This is the only way I'll be able to forgive him. And I can't detach with love from Tooty's phobic compulsion until I've forgiven the b—the man I've blamed in my heart.
Context
The Ninth Step's recursive geometry laid bare: the amend the A.D.A. owes isn't for a wrong he did but for the resentment he's carried — he must ask the forgiveness of the man he hates, for his own failure to forgive that man. The program routes his release entirely through the person he least wants to approach, because the hatred is the thing poisoning him, not the injury; he cannot detach with love from his wife's torment until he has forgiven the man he blames for it. Forgiveness engineered as the price of his own freedom.