| It's probably a matter of definition, but I think it's useful to distinguish forgiving and (re)trusting. IMO this is the most important distinction on this topic, whatever definition you give.
The difference between: - to forgive (that is, letting go of negative feelings, accepting what happened), and to - to trust (that what happened would not happen again). You definitely don't need the other person (or their actions) for the former.
But you need evidence of some change for the latter.
(Ideally you need the other person to acknowledge what and why it happened, and following actions to attest to the new behaviour) You can easily forgive a child that somehow misbehaved, without any work or interaction on their part, and have zero hard feelings. Which is different from trusting that the child's behaviour has changed. Mixing forgiving and trusting, as is done throughout the article, is not at all productive. You seemed to have forgiven them, but you don't trust them. How could you? |