I’ve heard this phrase since I was a child. I was always taught to forgive and forget, but can you ever really do that?

Many times I heard “Yes I can forgive you for what you did but I don’t think I could ever forget it”. How about the other way around with the “I can try to forget what she did to me but I’ll never ever forgive her”. I’ve been present in both occasions, not necessarily told at me but to other people, true story. Are they not supposed to go hand by hand?

For me, forgiveness is to give peace, start over from scratch like using an eraser to clean the chalkboard entirely. You can’t very well erase the board then claim that you still see what was written there, it’s not supposed to work like that. True forgiveness means a clean slate.

How about forgetting something you can’t forgive? You can’t do that! The idea of forgetting is to leave everything behind. Not forgiving means you can’t make peace with yourself by letting it go, so clearly you can’t forget it. You might think you did, by putting it aside for a bit while not actually forgetting but “not remembering” (totally different). Those old feelings always come back when a memory of what happened triggers them. Forgetting something you can’t forgive is not possible, not in my world.

I’ve always tried to forgive and forget, like I said, that’s how I was taught. It’s just that sometimes it takes longer to heal the wound, and you think you can heal faster by forgiving. You feel bad for the other person asking for forgiveness that your compassion takes over and you just blurt out those words, thinking you’re feeling them when you really don’t. After some time you realize you still have some resentment left, and instead of letting it go, unconsciously you hide it very deep inside of you, because you already forgave them, you can’t take that back —”You know what, I take it back, I don’t forgive you”— See how stupid that sounds? Sadly you know that hidden anger will show up eventually, hurting you and that person even more.

You’re asking my opinion?

1. Don’t forgive if you don’t feel it deep inside, they will think you’re cold hearted but it’ll be better in the long run, for both.
2. Never say you don’t think you could ever forgive someone; forgive, always forgive, not for them but for you, but only when you’re ready. They’ll understand.
3. If you forgive, learn to forget, that means no joking about it, throwing it to their face when fighting or even reminding them during conversations.
4. If you forget truly forget, then that’s the first step of true forgiving.