What is forgiveness?

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I've realized that I actually don't have a clear understanding of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive? I've always assumed that it meant to change your mind and believe that what someone did actually was alright and then forget about it. But is it? Because if so, I'm unable to do that.

I tend to hold grudges when someone hurts me for real, especially if it keeps happening over and over. This is also when my trust for them disappears completely and I'm finding it hard to take their words (such as 'sorry' and 'i love you') as genuine anymore. I hate that I have to feel bitter towards someone close to me, even family members, but I find it really hard to truly love someone who has wronged me and caused me distress. I guess it's self defense. Should you forgive still? How do you do it?

This is a really hard question.

Even in its truest form, I don't think forgiveness requires forgetting, although "true" forgiveness would probably imply that you will not hold a grudge against the person, and you will like the person just as much as if the incident didn't happen.

This doesn't mean that you won't try to protect yourself from it happening again, especially if it's something that happens over and over again.

Imagine if you're really good friends with someone who can't help but cheat whenever he or she plays a game, and you've managed to forgive them for this fault. All that this means is that you will still like the person in spite of the fact that he or she always cheats.

It doesn't mean that you've decided it's OK to cheat. It doesn't mean that you're not going to try to prevent the person from cheating if you play a game. You might even forgive this person for this fault, but still refuse to play games with him or her.

All of that said, I think there are very few people in the world who are able to quickly grant true forgiveness for something that is serious.

If we have been truly hurt by someone else and want to forgive him or her, the best most of us can do is make a decision that we still want to be friends with that person and make a conscious effort to look past the issue. Perhaps, over time, the wound will truly heal and true forgiveness will be achieved.

I don't think forgiveness means that you have to accept that was they did was alright.

I think forgiveness means that even if someone has done something wrong, you decide to keep loving them anyway.

I don't think forgiveness depends on a feeling- I might still be annoyed but I can choose not to let it get in the way of the relationship, and treat them kindly anyway.

It is much easier to forgive someone if they admit that they have done wrong and say sorry, then you move on from that. But if someone keeps hurting you even after you tell them about it, it might be that they are not being a good friend.

If a boyfriend or girlfriend keeps cheating on you or hurting you physically, then I think it is not a good relationship to continue.

If a brother or sister keeps saying something that makes you sad or angry, then you might need to talk to them and tell them why it upsets you.

Forgiveness is accepting that someone may have done something wrong, but you'll let it stay in the past and focus on having a positive relationship with them now. Unless they keep doing it, in which case it might be smart to keep your guard up a little.

A few years ago, I ran across a statement in Psychology Today that struck me as constructive in situations like this:

Forgiveness is often wrongly associated with concepts such as pardoning and condoning. Current theorists however define it as replacing negative feelings about an offender with more positive or at least neutral ones. Doing so becomes something we do not just to be “good,” but rather a crucial skill in the pursuit of a healthy, fulfilling life.

So I didn't have to totally pardon the people and their actions, all I had to do was upgrade my feelings about them to neutral, kind of like it was just something that happened. By doing so it let me stop carrying around the hurt and move on to a more fulfilling life.

I've found forgiveness in its pure sense doesn't mean forgetting or minimizing the hurt we might feel or the damage the other person may have caused or justifying what they did by understanding how they came about to commit a hurtful act. It is a cancelling of their indebtedness to us for an actual wrong - a decision not to hold a hurtful act against the other person. When I've been able to decide not to hold the other person in my debt, I find that I often come to feel understanding and even empathy for them. I've got a very detailed and vivid autistic memory that contains just about every single thing done to me that scared or hurt me in some way back to about age 2, and those memories tend to pop up in Dolby technicolor when I run into a situation that reminds me of the past hurt, and the feelings related to the rejection, bullying, ostracism, discounting of my relevance as a person, having things stolen or destroyed, etc., etc. are as fresh as the day they happened. But I've learned that I can live with the memories and myself more comfortably when I'm able to 'cancel the debt' and let the person off the hook and not need to obsess on revenge and then hunt them down and hold them responsible, like 40 years after the fact, rofl. It's like an internal decision to be at peace and not needing to beat myself or the other person over the head... I guess it's more of a spiritual rather than psychological act.

Forgiveness is not for the other people. It is for yourself. It's about letting go of something for your own sake, not for someone else's.

Until you reach forgiveness, you have a constant irritant looping through your memories. It is telling you to either change the conditions that let a problem arise, or find a way to live with it. Aspies are unusually keen on justice, but it really isn't possible. We are constantly nourished for free by the sun, etc, and we divert that energy according to the whims of the day. If we are busy redressing some wrong, we are starving a new project. This can only be justified if it changes a pattern of wrongdoing.
Nobody, even an aspie, ever has enough information or wisdom to never screw up. It is best to laugh it off as much as possible.

I don't completely grasp it, but I think it's letting go of a grudge. I've heard holding grudges can be both psychologically and physically unhealthy for people. So you're really just harming yourself. So I guess forgiving means being able to get over it, you let it go, and move on with your life.

For me it's to remove all negative notions of that person from my mind so I PERSONALLY don't have to feel the hostility or hatred towards them. If they can't hurt me again or choose not to do it further, and if what they did doesn't have a lasting impact, then they are not important to me, so why should I keep them as part of my mind? If someone causes great damage to me however, then I will never forgive them and seek revenge when possible.

Forgiveness can be explained like this: Let's say someone insults you, but later apologizes (or doesn't). Then much later on, you get the option to insult them back while they're unable to respond. If you choose to, it means you were harboring a feeling of negativity or hurt against them, which is fair. But if you choose not to because you feel what they did didn't bother you then you won't feel like responding because you didn't care in the first place.

When I forgive someone I feel no hostility towards them later on, I just feel like they're just another single individual in the pool of unknown or unassociated individuals. When I don't forgive someone, and in rare cases, even when they apologize or try to make it up, then I have just given up a part of my own patience in turn for feeling hostility towards them. It's pointless to feel hostility when you can't get someone back, but sometimes it alleviates a mental pain just to think negatively about them.

I had trouble understanding quite what forgiveness meant. The word implies it's an act, but eventually I figured it to be simply not bearing a grudge. The idea of "the act of forgiveness" suggests it's something that can be deliberately applied, but I don't think it can. I don't think it's always a black and white thing, I think there can be various degrees of ill-feeling towards those who we feel have harmed us. I think it's usually best left to nature and rational thought to decide how long to label another person as a threat.

Various spiritual traditions support variations on "Hate the sin, not the sinner." Whatever happened is regrettable, and may occasionally be redressed, but if we condemn the perpetrators, instead of inviting them to just do better, the problems persist more.

I think forgiving is giving the person a second chance, but without trust.

Never forget.

Forgive once......judge by subsequent behavior.

I also thought forgiveness was when you don't hold it against someone anymore so you let them back in your life and talk to them again. But I have been seeing people say they forgive their rapist or their parent who abused them, etc. and I am like how can they forgive them if they still don't want to see them and let them see their grand kids?

I find this very confusing too. Maybe forgiveness means you don't feel resentment anymore or anger and you have just moved on and it doesn't affect you anymore. But how can it be forgiveness if you are still affected by it? Unless someone overcomes PTSD, I have a hard time understanding how it can be forgiveness if they still have PTSD.

Like Ezra and others have said, its not so much about forgetting... it's about moving away from the hurt and towards something similar to indifference. Holding grudges traps you in the past and stunts your personal growth, forgiveness allows you to be empowered and not remain a victim.