When Forgiving and Forgetting Just Isn’t Enough

I’ve been in relationships where trust has been compromised. Many of us have. Whether it was simply being given misleading information intentionally, or down right cheating, these situations can really place you at a serious crossroads of what to do in a relationship. When you know that your relationship could never be what it could’ve been, because of what it has been, is a powerful realization.

Forgive and forget, and get over it, have been spoon fed to us since we were baby girls. It has been woven into society for women as a way of life. I do not necessarily buy into that entire concept. The idea as far as personal healing, yes of course, but for the sake of letting people not be held accountable, no, I do not agree. 

What people do to you after you hand over your heart and your trust to them, can dictate the path in which your relationship travels. I like to call this your relationship journey so to speak. Think of it like those books we read as kids, and I know that I am dating myself here, but in these books, you have a decision to make. One decision sends you to page 7 and another decision sends you to page 18. Each decision affects every outcome, and unlike the book, you can’t go back if you don’t like where your choice has taken you. Once a person’s trust is broken, regardless of how positive of a person you are, you must admit that you would love the person more, had they not hurt you and disappointed you. No matter how great your relationship is, the idea of how much greater it could be will always exist, whether you dwell on it or not.  Depending on how deep the wound, getting on with a somewhat unaffected life may be easy to do, but deeper wounds require more self-searching for whether the relationship is salvageable to whether it is even worth it. You can fix many things, but even still thereafter they are not the same, and this holds true especially true in the case of a relationship. The way you once looked at someone may be slightly, if not greatly altered. Their touch may feel different. Their words may not carry the same weight. You must ask yourself, with those things changed, is it even the same relationship it once was? The answer is no but is it one you’re willing to live with is the bigger question. 

We as women are resilient but staying in a situation where you no longer have the peace that trust, and loyalty grants you, can be a disservice to yourself. Only you know your relationship, how deeply you love this person and if certain actions are ones you can get past. If you simply cannot get past certain things, it really is okay to walk away, because what is most important is a thing, we tend to all forget, which is our happiness.