The Essence of Forgiveness and Forgetting in Love

“You cannot love if you cannot forgive.”
— Kemi Sogunle

There is no such thing as a perfect partner, a perfect lover, as no lover who can do no wrong and reads your every thought. A perfect lover doesn’t exist, that is why when we fall in love with someone, they are bound to hurt us the most. The reason being that they are closer to our hearts and so when they hurt us, the wound is heart deep. Forgiving our partner is the only the way we can continue to grow in love and heal from the pain they have cost us either intentionally or unintentionally. There can’t be love without forgiveness, you can’t claim to love somebody without learning to forgive his or her actions or inactions.

Forgiveness doesn’t entail you allow emotional or physical abuse to reign over you or tolerating your partner’s excesses without s/he trying to curtail it. It is deliberately letting go of the hurt and pain your partner caused you because he or she is sober and sorry about what he or she did. Many people find difficult to forgive and some other times, some things are hard to forgive, say for instance you just caught your partner cheating or keeping a deadly secret, these things can breaks a man’s heart but you must realize that forgiveness is not really about your partner because truth be told whether you choose to be with your partner or not, he or she may move on with his or her life, leaving you to yours. Forgiveness is for you, to breathe well, to let go of all the pains, to douse the flame of anger, of resentment towards your partner. Forgiveness frees your soul, it allow you grow instead of you drowning in all sorts of negative emotions. If your partner is truly sorry and you forgive him/her, it strengthens your relationship and elongates it. You shouldn’t only forgive huge mistakes and errors, also forgive little things like an off handed comment, an insult, a particular attitude e.t.c. If you don’t forgive your partner, it affects your relationship with other people, Co workers, employees, coursemates, God. Forgiveness heals faster than any medicine.

Forgiveness can’t be complete without forgetting. You can’t totally forgive your partner without forgetting about what he/she did. Forgiving may be easier than forgetting, to let go of the pain gradually is much easier than forgetting but total and undiluted, unadulterated forgiveness needs the ability to forget the incident. Forgetting entails you suppressing or erasing the incident from your memory, letting the past be the past and never referring to it no matter the circumstance. Only when you forgive and forget, can you breathe easily.

As we grow and live, many people will hurt us, our ability to forgive and forget will take us far in life. The ones we love the most especially our lover will hurt us the most, but we learn to forgive and forget, our relationships will wax stronger. This has been Relationship Corner with Eddie Schwaggs.