Forgiveness

To forgive is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence or mistake. Asking for forgiveness is an act of seeking restitution or compensating for the hurt you may have inflicted on another human being.

Forget

To forget is to completely loose remembrance of an event that may have occurred.

Forgiving and forgetting means to completely let go of hurt and the memory of hurt. We often hear the phrase just forgive and forget but how easy is it to just do that?

The illusion of forgiveness

A lot of people think that forgiveness is that which washes all our sins away maybe in the case of God and man, but between humans that is just an illusion. The illusion that your admitting your wrong doings against someone and asking for forgiveness will automatically make everything go back to normal is more of a fallacy.

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Look at this from the perspective of a glass vase. You had a glass vase and you broke it. You may try to fix the glass vase up gluing piece to piece but guess what? You will never get it to the way it was before you broke it and that is how relationships and forgiveness work.

Your relationship with the person was the glass vase before it was broken and the glued vase with all the cracks to remember what happened to the glass is the vase after it was broken. Do not expect your relationship to get back to the way it was before the hurt.

When you hurt someone and ask for forgiveness that is just the first step to reconciliation the fact that you say you are sorry doesn’t mean that the hurt party forgets all the pain you have put them through. Realize this, when you hurt someone they go through a lot of emotional torment.

Have you ever seen a woman scorned? She is a mess, a woman who may have been happy or emotionally stable  suddenly becomes a beast. A man hurt may lash out to the world wanting to hurt someone the way they have been hurt. Now do you think 3 words “I am Sorry” will just magically wash all the hurt away and ease the build up of pain? I think not.

Selfish Expectation

If you are sincere you will know that the act of asking for forgiveness is a bit selfish. In the sense that you are doing it more for yourself than for the person you hurt. You ask for forgiveness because your conscience has told you that you wronged someone and you need to ask for forgiveness for your own peace of mind. See how selfish that is in truth?

Therefore, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness we expect the person to forgive us and forget all that happened just because we asked. Most people only ask for their peace of mind so they can say “I asked him for forgiveness” not caring to know if that person can ever forgive you. You hurt someone and you are the one impatient to hear the verdict. Selfish much?

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There are various levels of hurt remember this do not expect a man who has been cheated on to just forgive and forget as easily a man who you refused to feed those are two different levels of mistakes and we should understand this. If you break someone’s trust please get ready to keep asking for forgiveness and doing things that will enable them forget their hurting heart in time.

Time and not mere “I’m sorry” heals all wounds.

So you were hurt

He hurt me, she broke my heart okay. You have forgiven him or her but can’t seem to forget. Note that not forgetting isn’t holding a grudge those are two different things. Holding a grudge means you haven’t forgiven but not forgetting means you have forgiven but you haven’t forgotten your betrayal.

I dare say that not forgetting helps you handle such people with kid's glove. You are polite to them but you don’t want them as an important part of your life and that is understandable and you are entitled to feel this way.

However, learning to forgive and completely let go of the past by forgetting or learning to forget gradually will help you heal and it won’t happen overnight. It will take a while and if you want to be close with your offenders again after healing that is solely up to you.

Don’t get me wrong if you feel you shouldn’t let them back into your life and your reason is viable then you shouldn’t, no one wants snakes around them after all. However second chances are real, people make silly mistakes sometimes and will never repeat them if given a second chance.

So you can give the person another chance to prove themselves maybe your relationship with be better this time around. Who knows? But you are doing that at your own risk because when people show you their true selves especially when they break your trust, be grateful that the charade is over. Therefore if you continue in that relationship after forgiveness and forgetting you are doing so at your own risk.

Written by  Destiny Awata (@deeawata)