I have a lot of difficulty understanding forgiveness. Here's why. I'm always willing to forgive and forget and I do almost entirely forget, I start a new clean chapter. With my sister, she'll do something really nasty, like steal from me, then act as if I've done something wrong to her and not speak to me for years. Then we bump into each in the street and she'll say how much she missed me and loves me. I don't raise the past issues because it will start a fight. So we get together, she's over the top nice for a while, then she does something nasty again, acts as if it's me and doesn't talk to me for years.
My daughter is now showing similar patterns of behaviour, does some really unkind and uncaring things, says things that hurt me deeply and if I confront her on it, she'll say 'she doesn't remember', or why am I making a drama about it, so I don't confront it any more, I let it go and carry on as if everything's the same.
So here's my conundrum. If I forgive, people think they can continue to hurt me and I'm more or less gagged, because if I say anything about them hurting me, it starts another argument and they don't seem to understand or care that they hurt me.
Now, when it comes to 'forgive' but 'don't forget' the problem with that is, if I don't forget, I get angry and don't want anything to do with either of them.
How do you forgive, but at the same time protect yourself from further hurt and, what do you do if the person hurting you is not interested in discussing it and turns it around on to you?