I have a hard time with this myself Crazy Hitch. I have a hard time with it because I suffer from complex ptsd where I have literally relived things in a way I never imagined reliving.

One thing I most definitely KNOW is "we may not remember exactly what someone says, but we NEVER forget how it made us feel". And one of the busiest forums on this site happens to be the relationship forum, you know why? It's the same question, "how can I experience a relationship where I don't get hurt by the other person?". And how can I prevent messing up a relationship? How can I fix this or stop it from happening?

Truth is some people experience so many bad things pretty early on in their lives and they genuinely did not have the ability to understand it or even that it was wrong. It never ceases to amaze me that human beings are so intelligent, the most intelligent life form on earth. Yet, human beings are the most fragile for the longest. Human beings are so intelligent yet also so incredibly vunerable to following along with a ideal that can be so harmful and not really based on fact or reality.

Someone said to me one day "if you mention you happen to follow a certain political ideal, that is enough for another person to actually HATE you". The same is true for religion. The longer you live the more you learn how anyone can hate you for just about anything. "It is no measure to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society". Maybe, forgiving is more about forgiving yourself for not seeing the warning signs to prevent another person from hurting you.