Learning to Forgive

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you”. Lewis B. Smedes emphasized a good point with this quotation. We tend to think that by not forgiving we are harming the person who hurt us, but the truth is we are also hurting ourselves. Forgiveness is crucial to maintain a healthy relationship, as well as to prevent you from building feelings of resentment. To prevent harm to both you and your partner there are several points that must be kept in mind when forgiving.

In order to prevent grudges to grow and walls of resentment to build up, it is important to express and let out your feelings. If you are working towards forgiving your partner you must communicate and express your thoughts to him/her. Sharing your feelings after being hurt will not only be healthy towards your relationship but to you as well. If we try to keep everything inside we will reach a point where we won’t know how to handle the pressure. This can lead to dangerous action but can be prevented through communication.

When struggling with forgiveness it is also important to remember the golden rule. We must put ourselves in our partner’s position and think about how we would like to be treated in such situation. No one is perfect and at one point or another, everyone makes mistakes. If you are determined to maintain the relationship there are certain prices that will need to be paid. It won’t be easy but if your partner offers a sincere apology, you must be willing to open yourself towards forgiveness and be willing to give a second chance. This doesn’t mean things will go back to the way they normally were, mistakes are lessons that have to be learned.

After hurting you, your partner will loose a great amount of your trust. We can compare it to a glass object, once broken you can try putting it back together but you will always see the cracks. Those moments of hurt will strongly mark the relationship and it will take a period of time for the trust to be restored. However, people tend to misjudge the meaning of forgiveness. They tend to follow a forgive and forget philosophy. Unless you forget you can’t forgive. Wrong. I disagree with this statement for various reasons. We are not God, we are merely humans, therefore our minds will always be able to recall certain moments in our lives. I believe it is possible to forgive with out forgetting. The art of this consists in erasing the pain, resentment; grudge and such feeling once remembering the moment. The ability to forgive is in being able to remember the pain without feeling the hurt. Once you are capable of doing that, forgiveness is present.

Forgiveness is a normal stage in a relationship. It is very difficult but if there is determination, patience and love, it can be done and can serve as a step of growth.