I agree that forgiveness is more for the person doing the forgiving than it is for the person forgived.

I also think that forgiveness is not always necessary to moving on in a healthy way. What I think is critical though is acceptance. It's something I'm struggling with about something someone dear to me did that hurt me. I haven't fully accepted all of it. It's still just so hard for me to believe, as it came out of the blue. So I think there's still a part of me that hasn't fully accepted that this is what he did. It may be, in part, related to what was mentioned above...the need or desire to protect myself from something like that happening again. So I hold onto my anger and pain about it. Although conversely, I think I have some denial about it, too, because if I truly accepted the thing, that would mean that this someone really did intentionally hurt me very badly. That's a hard thing to wrap my brain around and be okay with it. I'm still working on that.

But it feels to me, and I've seen this in practice, that if I could wrap my brain around it enough to accept fully what happened and why, that the pain would somehow lessen. At any rate, I think that it would be impossible for me to forgive if I don't first accept.

Just some musings on the subject.... Good topic!

gg