I can't accurately answer the poll because there's no answer like "depends".
But it really does depend. You can be hurt badly in many different ways. Some ways are just unforgivable. There's one person I will never in my life forgive, but that person is dead anyway (literally). I forgave my grandma even when she gave me the cold shoulder at a really hard time in life. One of my best friends did some really crappy things that hurt me... and while they still annoy me when I think about it, it's not like I stopped being her friend for it. Same with my mom. She keeps asking me to forgive her, but it's not really like you can just tell your heart to stop or start feeling something at will.
I've been thinking about this lately because of an odd situation. You know those situations you see in books and movies where an old bully contacts you and apologizes? That actually happened to me a couple weeks ago. This one girl really was the worst bully to me all through elementary school (tripping me, pushing me over, flipping up my skirt, stealing my stuff kind of things aside from the normal teasing). She was also a jerk in middle school, but I didn't see her much so I didn't see that behavior often either. She added me to facebook a couple weeks back and apologized for her behavior. It wasn't really a heartfelt sincere apology type thing, but more like a "what's up? sorry I said mean things, we cool?" type thing. I was sort of dumbfounded, but just told her the past is in the past. Though it has become very awkward because now she's liking and commenting on all my stuff, and trying to get me to hang out to have a play date for our little girls. So I've been thinking if it's really just that "easy" to not only forgive and forget, but to act like it never happened and like you had a totally different past with somebody. I'm thinking that's what she wants... she really acts like she wants to be best friends now, but even the person she is now kind of annoys me.
Yet, I've forgiven a LOT of bull that some of my friends, relatives and even my husband have put me through. So it really does depend on each situation. I am definitely not the kind of person that believes you should ALWAYS forgive no matter what, though. |